Quisanté | Page 2

the

present, you know."
He asked nearly half the old lady's income; she sighed in relief. "Very
well, a thousand a year," she said. "Make a good show with it. Live
handsomely. It'll pay you to live handsomely."
A genuine unmistakable surprise showed itself on his face; now there
was even the indignation which a reference to non-payment of debts
had failed to elicit.
"I shall do something with it, you might know that," he said resentfully.
"Something honest, I mean."
"What?"
"Well, something not criminal," she amended, chuckling again. "I'm
sorry to seem to know you so well," she added.
"Oh, we know one another pretty well," said he with a nod. "Never the
jam without the powder from you."
"But always the jam," said old Maria. "And you'll find the world a good
deal like your aunt, Sandro."
An odd half-cunning half-eager gleam shot across his eyes.
"A man finds the world what he makes it," he said. He rose, came and
stood over her, and went on, laughing. "But the devil makes an aunt
once and for all, and won't let one touch his handiwork."
"You can touch her savings, though!"
He blazed out into a sudden defiance. "Oh, refuse if you like. I can
manage without you. You're not essential to me."
She smiled, her thin lips setting in a wry curve. Now and then it seemed
hard that there could be no affection between her and the one being
whom the course of events plainly suggested for her love. But, as

Sandro said, they knew one another very well. In the result she felt
entitled to assume no airs of superiority; he had not been a dutiful or a
grateful nephew, she had not been a devoted or a patient aunt; as she
looked back, she was obliged to remember one or two occasions when
he had driven or betrayed her into a severity of which she did not
willingly think. This reflection dictated the words with which she met
his outburst.
"You can tell your story on Judgment Day and I'll tell mine," she said.
"Oh, neither of 'em will lose in the telling, I'll be bound. Meanwhile
let's be----"
"Friends?" he suggested with an obvious but not ill-natured sneer.
"Lord, no! Whatever you like! Banker and client, debtor and creditor,
actor and audience? Take your choice--and send me your bank's
address."
He nodded slightly, as though he concluded a bargain, not at all as
though he acknowledged a favour. Yet he remarked in a ruminative
tone, "I shall be very glad of the money."
A moment's pause followed. Then Miss Quisanté observed reluctantly,
"The only thing I ever care to know about you is what you're planning,
Sandro. Don't I earn that by my thousand a year?"
"Well, here you are. I'm started, thanks to Dick Benyon and myself.
I've got my seat, I can go on now. But I'm an outsider still." He paused
a moment. "I feel that; Benyon feels it too. I want to obviate it a bit. I
mean to marry."
"An insider?" asked the old lady. She looked at him steadily. "Your
taste's too bad," she said; he was certainly dressed in a rather bizarre
way. "And your manners," she added. "She won't have you," she ended.
Quisanté took no notice and seemed not to hear; he stood quite still by
the window, staring over the park. "Besides she'll know what you want
her for."

He wheeled round suddenly and looked down at his aunt. His face was
softer, the cunningness had gone from his smile, his eyes seemed larger,
clearer, even (by a queer delusion of sight) better set and wider apart.
"Yes, I'll show her that," he said in a low voice, with a new richness of
tone.
Old Maria looked up at him with an air of surprise.
"You do want her for that? As a help, I mean?" she asked.
His lips just moved to answer "Yes." Aunt Maria's eyes did not leave
his face. She remembered that when he had come before to talk about
contesting the seat in Parliament he had now won, there had been a
moment (poised between long periods of calculation and elaborate
forecasts of personal advantage) in which his face had taken on the
same soft light, the same inspiration.
"You odd creature!" she murmured gently. "She's handsome, I
suppose?"
"Superb--better than that."
"A swell?" asked old Maria scornfully.
"Yes," he nodded.
His aunt laughed. "A Queen among women?" was the form her last
question took.
"An Empress," said Alexander Quisanté, the more ornate title bursting
gorgeously from his lips.
"Just the woman for you then!" remarked Aunt Maria. A stranger
would have heard nothing in her tone save mockery. Quisanté heard
more, or did not hear that at all. He