“Everything,” Monmouth cried. “You look like an undertaker. Fortunately we are very much of a size and I have some dress clothes I’ve never worn. If Madame de Beaulieu had seen you I don’t know what would have happened.”
In ten minutes Trent was back in the drawing room this time arrayed as he himself desired to be. Madame de Beaulieu had not yet come down.
“Madame is particular then?” Trent hazarded.
“She has a right to be,” Monmouth said a little stiffly, “she belongs to one of the great families of France.”
Trent, watching him, saw that he believed it. This was a new angle. She had deceived Monmouth without a doubt. For the first time, and the last, Trent observed a certain confusion about Captain Monmouth.
“In confidence,” he said, “Madame de Beaulieu and I are engaged to be married. Captain de Beaulieu and she were negotiating for divorce when the war broke out and we must wait therefore.”
Trent remembering Moor’s report as to the members of the household pointed to Edward Conway sipping his third cocktail. “That’s the chaperon, eh?”
“Madame de Beaulieu’s aunt, Madame de Berlaymont, is here,” Monmouth said affably. “It is our custom to use French at the table as much to starve the servants of food for gossip as anything else. You speak French of course?”
“Not a word,” Trent lied promptly, “now if you want to talk Danish or Swedish I’m with you.”
Madame de Berlaymont! No doubt the French maid resuming the aunt pose. At the Guestwick affair she had been an English lady of fashion. Had they put themselves to this bother simply for his sake? He doubted it.