Steinfeld bowed politely, and the two men exchanged, with smiles upon their faces, a cordial grasp of the hand.
“Out of evil cometh good,” said the banker, sententiously, subsiding upon the silken cushions of a causeuse that extended its arms invitingly at the chimney-corner. “I am delighted to find that the leaden bullet I anticipated exchanging with you is likely to be converted into a golden ring, establishing so near a connection between us as to render our fighting a duel one of the least probable things in the world. My dear baron, I shall rejoice to call you brother-in-law.”
“It would be a great honour for me,” replied Steinfeld, “but you overrate the probability of my enjoying it. Nothing has passed between Mademoiselle Gonfalon and myself to warrant my reckoning on her preference.”
“Tush, tush! baron,” said Fatello, apparently not heeding, or not noticing the somewhat supercilious turn of Steinfeld’s phrases, “you forget the new and not very creditable occupation to which the demons of jealousy and suspicion last night condemned me. You forget that I tracked you in the promenade, and lay in ambush by the fountain, or you would hardly put me off with such tales as these.”
The baron winced imperceptibly on being thus reminded how closely his movements had been watched.
“You are evidently new at the profession of a scout,” said he, jestingly, “or you would have caught more correctly my conversation with your amiable sister-in-law. Mademoiselle Gonfalon is a charming person; the mask gives a certain license to flirtation, and a partial hearing of what passed between us has evidently misled you as to its precise import.”
“Not a bit of it!” cried Fatello, with an odd laugh—“I heard better than you think, I assure you; and what I did hear quite satisfied me that you are a smitten man, and that Sebastiana is well disposed to favour your suit.”
“I must again protest,” said Steinfeld, expressing himself with some embarrassment, “that the thought of becoming Mademoiselle Gonfalon’s husband, great as the honour would be, has never yet been seriously entertained by me; and that, however you may have been misled by the snatches of our conversation you overheard, nothing ever passed between us exceeding the limits of allowable flirtation—the not unnatural consequence of Mademoiselle Sebastiana’s fascinating vivacity, and of the agreeable footing of intimacy on which, for the last three months, I have found admittance at your hospitable house.”
Sigismund Fatello preserved, whilst the baron waded through the intricacies of his artificial and complicated denial, a half-smile of polite but total incredulity.