“I confess the beauty of the evening makes me a little unwilling to leave this place just yet.”
“Ah! the beauties of Nature—I feel them with you, Monsieur Trudaine; I feel them here.” Saying this, Lomaque laid one hand on his heart, and with the other pulled his stick out of the grass. He had looked as little at the landscape or the setting sun as Monsieur Justin himself.
They sat down, side by side, on the empty bench; and then there followed an awkward pause. Submissive Lomaque was too discreet to forget his place, and venture on starting a new topic. Trudaine was preoccupied, and disinclined to talk. It was necessary, however, in common politeness, to say something. Hardly attending himself to his own words, he began with a commonplace phrase: “I regret, Monsieur Lomaque, that we have not had more opportunities of bettering our acquaintance.”
“I feel deeply indebted,” rejoined the land-steward, “to the admirable Madame Danville for having chosen me as her escort hither from her son’s estate near Lyons, and having thereby procured for me the honor of this introduction.” Both Monsieur Lomaque’s red-rimmed eyes were seized with a sudden fit of winking, as he made this polite speech. His enemies were accustomed to say that, whenever he was particularly insincere, or particularly deceitful, he always took refuge in the weakness of his eyes, and so evaded the trying ordeal of being obliged to look steadily at the person whom he was speaking with.
“I was pleased to hear you mention my late father’s name, at dinner, in terms of high respect,” continued Trudaine, resolutely keeping up the conversation. “Did you know him?”
“I am indirectly indebted to your excellent father,” answered the land-steward, “for the very situation which I now hold. At a time when the good word of a man of substance and reputation was needed to save me from poverty and ruin, your father spoke that word. Since then I have, in my own very small way, succeeded in life, until I have risen to the honor of superintending the estate of Monsieur Danville.”
“Excuse me, but your way of speaking of your present situation rather surprises me. Your father, I believe, was a merchant, just as Danville’s father was a merchant; the only difference between them was that one failed and the other realized a large fortune. Why should you speak of yourself as honored by holding your present place?”
“Have you never heard?” exclaimed Lomaque, with an appearance of great astonishment, “or can you have heard, and forgotten, that Madame Danville is descended from one of the noble houses of France? Has she never told you, as she has often told me, that she condescended when she married her late husband; and that her great object in life is to get the title of her family (years since extinct in the male line) settled on her son?”
“Yes,” replied Trudaine; “I remember to have heard something of this, and to have paid no great attention to it at the time, having little sympathy with such aspirations as you describe. You have lived many years in Danville’s service, Monsieur Lomaque; have you”—he hesitated for a moment, then continued, looking the land-steward full in the face—“have you found him a good and kind master?”
Lomaque’s thin lips seemed to close instinctively at the question, as if he were never going to speak again. He bowed—Trudaine waited—he only bowed again. Trudaine waited a third time. Lomaque looked at his host with perfect steadiness for an instant, then his eyes began to get weak again. “You seem to have some special interest,” he quietly remarked, “if I may say so without offense, in asking me that question.”