“That means he has been playing again, or at least betting at the races, and has lost?”
“Yes, cousin, frightfully. There—I ought not to have told you, but I see no reason for concealing it from you; and as I have this opportunity of speaking privately to you, I will profit by it to give you another piece of advice more serious than any I have yet given you. Immediately make use of all the influence you still have over him to persuade him to leave Paris. There is some fatality about this place, as far as he is concerned. He is more prudent everywhere else, and will become so here once more. The fever he has been seized with again must absolutely be broken up. The deuce!” continued he, “two or three more relapses like this would lead to consequences that would test all your courage, ma belle duchesse, and bring you, as well as him, to extremities you are ill fitted to bear. That is what I am most anxious about, you will allow me to say; for, without making you the shadow of a declaration, I find you so beautiful, so good, and so adorable that the mere thought of you some day....”
“Keep to the point, Lando, if you please,” said I with an impatient air. “Where is Lorenzo? Why did he not return with you, and why have you come to tell me what he would probably tell me himself?”
“Tell you himself? He will take care not to do that. I have already told you I am betraying his confidence, but it is for his good as well as yours. It is best for you to know that the sum he has lost today surpasses the resources he has on hand, and in order to make the necessary arrangements to pay at once the debt he has incurred, he is obliged to write to his agent at Naples or Sicily. He went directly to the club for this purpose, and commissioned me to tell you it was for nothing of importance, and beg you to attend the dinner-party without him, and present his excuses to your friends. He will join you in the evening.”
Everything now seemed easily arranged according to my wishes, and of itself, as it were.
“That is very fortunate,” said I eagerly, telling him of the excuse I [pg 024] had sent for us both. “Therefore, Lando, go back to the club, I beg; or rather, I will write Lorenzo myself that he can arrange his affairs at his leisure, and return when he pleases to dine with me. I shall wait till he comes.”
I hastily seized my pen to write him, but Lando resumed:
“Oh! as to that, cousin, you will only waste your trouble; for seeing how late it was, and that he could not possibly be here in season to accompany you, he accepted an invitation to dine with an acquaintance of his (and yours also, I suppose) whom he met at the races to-day.”
“An acquaintance of his?...” I repeated, my heart filling with a keen anguish that made me turn pale without knowing why.
Lando perceived it. “Do not be alarmed,” said he, smiling. “It is not Mme. de B——, though she was at the races also, and made a fruitless effort to divert Lorenzo's mind from what was going on. Really, in your place,” continued he with his usual levity, “I should regret she did not succeed. That would have been much better than ... Come, ... do not frown. I am joking. To be serious, Lorenzo is not going to dine with her to-day, but with a lady from Milan who has just arrived, and whom you doubtless know. It is Donna Faustina Reali, the Marquise de Villanera!...”