Aloud he said: ‘Yes; I believe Othmar bade my wife bring you. Perhaps she thought it was too much like the great world for you; it was a brilliant affair—all done for the Princess Napraxine.’
‘Who is the Princess Napraxine?’ she asked, surprised at her own temerity.
‘She is the lady of Othmar’s dreams,’ said de Vannes, with an unkind satisfaction. ‘You are sure to see her here sometime. What did you think of him the other night? You know, I suppose, that he could buy up all France if he chose.’
‘I did not know,’ she murmured. ‘Nicole, I think, said that he was rich.’
‘Rich!’ echoed the Duc, with derision. ‘That is not a word to describe Othmar. He has about a million millions, and he would probably be happier if he were the blind beggar of the Pont Neuf. His millions do not do anything for him with Nadine Napraxine, and it is only for Nadine Napraxine that he exists.’
Then he paused; the respect for la jeune fille, by which the most dissolute of his countrymen is restrained from long habit, making him repress the sentence he had on his lips; that momentary flush and light of happiness at being remembered by Othmar which he had seen on his young cousin’s face had made him bitter against his neighbour and friend, and he would willingly have continued his sarcasms on a man who, with all the world at his feet, cared only for another man’s wife, who laughed at him.
Yseulte listened with serious and wistful eyes; she did not know enough of his meaning, nor enough of the sympathy which had attracted her towards Othmar, to understand why she felt a vague pain at hearing these things said of him mingled with a delighted gratitude that he had remembered her. It was not to have gone to his party that she cared for, but to be remembered by him.
The children and their governesses approached her at that moment, and the Duc somewhat hurriedly turned away.
‘Do not let these fools see your locket,’ he said quickly, meaning by that epithet the wise women who educated his daughters. ‘If Cri-Cri notice it, tell her, of course.’
Yseulte, surprised at the injunction, looked at him in wonder; but she saw so much irritation in his expression that, being accustomed to obey the orders of others without comment, and to be taught that silence was one of the first of duties, she put his gift in her pocket as the children approached, and their father, with a petulant word or two, turned away, lighting a cigar.