“And the admiral—is he with him?” inquired Raymond.
“I’m expecting him down to-morrow. How long is it since you saw him?”
“Hé!… let us not count the years, mon cher! We were all young then.”
“We’re all young now,” protested the hearty baronet. “Men of our time of life never grow old; it’s only these young ones that can afford that sort of thing,” nodding toward Franceline, who, since she found her Frenchman was no Frenchman, appeared to have lost all interest in him, and was busily tidying her father’s table. “As to the admiral, he’s younger than ever he was. By the way, I don’t intend to let him cut me out with a certain young lady; so let me see no flirtation in that quarter. I’ll not stand it. Do you hear me, Miss Franceline?”
“Yes,” was the laconic rejoinder, and she went on fixing some loose papers in a letter-press.
“Yes, Monsieur le Comte is at home; but, as monsieur knows, he never likes to be disturbed at this hour,” replied Angélique, who was knitting the family stockings in the wee summer-house at the end of the garden.
“Oh! I’ll answer for it he won’t mind being disturbed this time,” said Sir Simon. “Tell him it’s his old friend, the admiral, who wants to see him.”
Before Angélique had got her needles under way and risen, a cry of jubilant welcome sounded from the closed shutters of the little room where the count was hard at work in the dark. “Mon cher De Vinton! how it rejoices me to embrace you.” And the Frenchman was in his friend’s arms in a minute. “My good Angélique, this is one of our eldest friends! Where is mademoiselle? Fetch her on the instant! Mon cher De Vinton.”
The four gentlemen—for Clide was there—went laughing and shaking hands into the house, and groped their way as best they could into Raymond’s study. He had the sensible foreign habit of keeping the shutters closed to exclude the heat, and the admiral nearly fell over a stool in scrambling for a chair.
“My dear Bourbonais, we’re none of us bats, and darkness isn’t a help to the flow of soul,” said Sir Simon; “so, by your leave, I’ll throw a little light on the subject.” And he pushed back the shutter.