Then he looked up, for some one touched him upon the arm.
“The ladies permit us to smoke in the library, which is the best room for music in the house,� said the pleasant voice of Monsieur de Courvaux; “so we will take our café and chasse in their company, if you please.�
Mr. Brown reached the door in time to open it, and to comprehend that the act of gallantry was not expected of him. And the feminine paroquets and the sable-coated male rooks went by, and Mademoiselle Lucie gave the handsome, well-groomed Englishman a shy glance of approval from under her black eyelashes, and Monsieur Frédéric, puffy with incipient indigestion, grinned feebly. Brown put his hand upon the boy’s shoulder, and followed the rest.
“You don’t want me to do any English to-night, do you, Monsieur Brown?� young hopeful insinuated, as they went into the long walnut-paneled room with another bay at the southern end with blinds undrawn, revealing a wonderful panorama of moonlit forest and river and champaign. “I can say ‘all-a-raight!’ ‘wat-a-rot!’ and ‘daddle-doo!’ already,� the youth continued. “The English groom of papa, I learned the words of him, voyez! You shall know Smeet, to-morrow!�
“Thanks, old fellow!� said Mr. Brown, with a good-humored smile.
“Grandmamma is making a sign that you are to go and speak to her, Monsieur,� said Mademoiselle Lucie, Brown’s elder pupil-elect. “Everybody in this house obeys Grandmamma, and so must you. Mamma says it is because she was so beautiful when she was young—young, you comprehend, as in that portrait over the fireplace—that everybody fell down and worshiped her. And she is beautiful now, is she not, sir? Not as the portrait; but——�
“The portrait, Mademoiselle?... Over the fireplace.... Good Lord, what an extraordinary likeness!� broke from Mr. Brown. For the counterpart of the exquisite picture of Varolan that had hung in the dining hall of the gray old northern castle where Mr. Brown’s boyhood, youth, and earliest manhood had been spent, hung above the hooded fifteenth-century fireplace of the noble library of this French château.
There she stood, the golden, slender, lily-faced, sapphire-eyed young aristocrat of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, with her indefinable air of pride and hauteur and exclusiveness mingled with girlish merriment and mischief. And there she sat—the original in the flesh—Madame la Marquise de Courvaux, the Grandmamma of these young people—regal in sweeping folds of amethyst velvet and wonderful creamy Spanish point lace.
Obedient to the bidding of her fan, Mr. Brown crossed the library and took the chair she indicated near her. And the diamond cross upon her still beautiful bosom moved quickly, with the beating of Grandmamma’s heart, as he did this.
“How like he is!—how like!� she whispered to herself; and the electric lights became crystal girandoles, and the library became a ballroom at the Tuileries. The Empress, beautiful and cold, passed down the ranks of curtsying, bare-backed, bejeweled women and bowing, gold-laced men. Monsieur de Courvaux, with his orders, his bald forehead, and his white whiskers, released mademoiselle at the claim of a tall, tawny-haired, hazel-eyed, fair-faced partner, a Highland gentleman, in plaid and philabeg, with sporran and claymore, the antique gold brooch upon his shoulder set with ancient amethysts, river pearls and cairngorms. And he told her how he loved her, there in the alcove of palms, and heard her little confession that, had she not been bound by a promise of marriage to Monsieur de Courvaux she would—oh, how gladly!—become the wife of Monsieur Angus Dunbar.