‘The situation is original,’ he resumed.
‘Quite,’ said I. ‘But let me tell you frankly you are blowing a cold coal. I owe you so much for your kindness to the prisoner Champdivers.’
‘Meaning that the lady’s affections are more advantageously disposed of?’ he asked, with a sneer. ‘Thank you, I am sure. And, since you have given me a lead, just hear a word of good advice in your turn. Is it fair, is it delicate, is it like a gentleman, to compromise the young lady by attentions which (as you know very well) can come to nothing?’
I was utterly unable to find words in answer.
‘Excuse me if I cut this interview short,’ he went on. ‘It seems to me doomed to come to nothing, and there is more attractive metal.’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘as you say, it cannot amount to much. You are impotent, bound hand and foot in honour. You know me to be a man falsely accused, and even if you did not know it, from your position as my rival you have only the choice to stand quite still or to be infamous.’
‘I would not say that,’ he returned, with another change of colour. ‘I may hear it once too often.’
With which he moved off straight for where Flora was sitting amidst her court of vapid youths, and I had no choice but to follow him, a bad second, and reading myself, as I went, a sharp lesson on the command of temper.
It is a strange thing how young men in their teens go down at the mere wind of the coming of men of twenty-five and upwards! The vapid ones fled without thought of resistance before the Major and me; a few dallied awhile in the neighbourhood—so to speak, with their fingers in their mouths—but presently these also followed the rout, and we remained face to face before Flora. There was a draught in that corner by the door; she had thrown her pelisse over her bare arms and neck, and the dark fur of the trimming set them off. She shone by contrast; the light played on her smooth skin to admiration, and the colour changed in her excited face. For the least fraction of a second she looked from one to the other of her pair of rival swains, and seemed to hesitate. Then she addressed Chevenix:—
‘You are coming to the Assembly, of course, Major Chevenix?’ said she.