“You have observed Antoinette, Mr. Ritchie,” he continued; “she is a strange mixture of wilfulness and caprice and self-sacrifice, and she has at times a bit of that wit which has made our house for generations the intimates—I may say—of sovereigns.”
This peculiar pride of race would have amused me in another man. I found myself listening to Monsieur de St. Gré with gravity, and I did not dare to reply that I had had evidence of Mademoiselle's aptness of retort.
“She has been my companion since she was a child, Monsieur. She has disobeyed me, flaunted me, nursed me in illness, championed me behind my back. I have a little book which I have kept of her sayings and doings, which may interest you, Monsieur. I will show it you.”
This indeed was a new side of Monsieur de St. Gré, and I reflected rather ruefully upon the unvarnished truth of what Mr. Wharton had told me,—ay, and what Colonel Clark had emphasized long before. It was my fate never to be treated as a young man. It struck me that Monsieur de St. Gré had never even considered me in the light of a possible suitor for his daughter's hand.
“I should be delighted to see them, Monsieur,” I answered.
“Would you?” he exclaimed, his face lighting up as he glanced at me. “Alas, Madame de St. Gré and I have promised to go to our neighbors', Monsieur and Madame Bertrand's, for to-night. But, to-morrow, if you have leisure, we shall look at it together. And not a word of this to my daughter, Monsieur,” he added apprehensively; “she would never forgive me. She dislikes my talking of her, but at times I cannot help it. It was only last year that she was very angry with me, and would not speak to me for days, because I boasted of her having watched at the bedside of a poor gentleman who came here and got the fever. You will not tell her?”
“Indeed I shall not, Monsieur,” I answered.
“It is strange,” he said abruptly, “it is strange that this gentleman and his wife should likewise have had letters to us from Monsieur Gratiot. They came from St. Louis, and they were on their way to Paris.”
“To Paris?” I cried; “what was their name?”
He looked at me in surprise.