“Gervais, you’re a fool,” was the excellent opening made by M. le Comte.
“Charles, you give me no news,” answered M. le Marquis. “Of what particular folly do you take the trouble to complain?”
He flung himself wearily upon a sofa, and his long graceful body sprawling there he looked up at his friend with a tired smile on that nobly handsome pale face that seemed to defy the onslaught of age.
“Of your last. This Binet girl.”
“That! Pooh! An incident; hardly a folly.”
“A folly—at such a time,” Sautron insisted. The Marquis looked a question. The Count answered it. “Aline,” said he, pregnantly. “She knows. How she knows I can’t tell you, but she knows, and she is deeply offended.”
The smile perished on the Marquis’ face. He gathered himself up.
“Offended?” said he, and his voice was anxious.
“But yes. You know what she is. You know the ideals she has formed. It wounds her that at such a time—whilst you are here for the purpose of wooing her—you should at the same time be pursuing this affair with that chit of a Binet girl.”
“How do you know?” asked La Tour d’Azyr.