“I saw none of it.”
“Did you visit any of our palaces?”
“Yes; St. James and Buckingham I saw at once, of course. But Windsor is glorious. We have nothing like Windsor in France. I have seen the finest palaces in Europe, and to my mind Windsor is the most beautiful of all. There is such a prestige of historic interest about it, added to its artistic beauty; then the grounds and the surrounding country are so beautiful. Nature and art have put forth their best to make it a worthy abode of royalty.”
“And our royalties—did you approve of them, too?”
“Most highly,” said M. Darvallon, smiling; “they are excellent hosts, since we are on the subject of hospitality. No one is overlooked. La Reine Victoria has in a high degree that royal faculty of making all her guests, from the highest to the humblest, feel that they are duly noticed in her salon.”
So these were the middle-class people who had been ostentatiously civil to the French officer. Pearl was laughing to herself at the false hit she had made, and also at her foolish idea that he needed to be encouraged to be put at his ease. It was impossible to be more entirely simple and free from all shyness and affectation than he was. They had reached the buffet now, and Léon and Polly were pushing their way to get next to them. This was not so difficult, for the crowd fell back, as it instinctively does for all royalties, and made way for Polly as she advanced. Pearl looked up at her companion, and saw his eyes fixed on her sister with an expression of admiration so unfeigned, and so full of respect at the same time, that she felt quite tenderly toward the stalwart hussar.
“Monsieur le Capitaine,” said Polly, as soon as they all came together round the ices, “he insists that it was you who took Sebastopol all by yourself!”
“Voyons, Léopold, don’t push modesty too far,” protested M. Darvallon. “You lent me a hand; he did, I assure you, mademoiselle.”
“Don’t believe him; he is a flatterer. It is a trick he learned at courts,” said Léon, and his solemn black eyes stared Darvallon full in the face without a smile; but Pearl detected an expression of almost feminine fondness in them as they met the gray eyes looking down on him.
“I don’t believe either of you took it,” she said, with saucy defiance; “it was my papa who took it. Did M. Léopold tell you our father is a soldier too, and that he lost a leg at Balaklava?”