“I do not comprehend you.” She spoke very coldly; she repented her profoundly of her concession in admitting a Chasseur d'Afrique to her presence.
“Possibly not. Mine was the folly to dream that you would ever do so. I should not have intruded on you now, but for this reason: the humiliation you were pleased to pass on me I could neither refuse nor resent to the dealer of it. Had I done so, men who are only too loyal to me would have resented with me, and been thrashed or been shot, as payment. I was compelled to accept it, and to wait until I could return your gift to you. I have no right to complain that you pained me with it, since one who occupies my position ought, I presume, to consider remembrance, even by an outrage, an honor done to him by the Princesse Corona.”
As he said the last words he laid on the table that stood near him the gold of Chateauroy's insult. She had listened with a bewildering wonder, held in check by the haughtier impulse of offense, that a man in this grade could venture thus to address, thus to arraign her. His words were totally incomprehensible to her, though, by the grave rebuke of his manner, she saw that they were fully meant, and, as he considered, fully authorized by some wrong done to him. As he laid the gold pieces down upon her table, an idea of the truth came to her.
“I know nothing of what you complain of; I sent you no money. What is it you would imply?” she asked him, looking up from where she leaned back in the low couch into whose depth she had sunk as he had spoken.
“You did not send me these? Not as payment for the chess service?”
“Absolutely not. After what you said the other day, I should have scarcely been so ill-bred and so heedless of inflicting pain. Who used my name thus?”
His face lightened with a pleasure and a relief that changed it wonderfully; that brighter look of gladness had been a stranger to it for so many years.
“You give me infinite happiness, madame. You little dream how bitter such slights are where one has lost the power to resent them! It was M. de Chateauroy, who this morning—”
“Dared to tell you I sent you those coins?”
The serenity of a courtly woman of the world was unbroken, but her blue and brilliant eyes darkened and gleamed beneath the sweep of their lashes.