The Indiscretion of the Duchess | Page 3

his friend that she shared my sorrow, and had left a polite message to that effect. That I was not much consoled needs no saying. That I required consolation will appear not unnatural when I say that the duchess was one of the most brilliant and well-known persons in French society; yes, and outside France also. For she was a cosmopolitan. Her father was French, her mother American; and she had passed two or three years in England before her marriage. She was very pretty, and, report said, as witty as a pretty woman need be. Once she had been rich, but the money was swallowed up by speculation; she and her father (the mother was dead) were threatened with such reduction of means as seemed to them penury; and the marriage with the duke had speedily followed--the precise degree of unwillingness on the part of Mlle. de Beville being a disputed point. Men said she was forced into the marriage, women very much doubted it; the lady herself gave no indication, and her father declared that the match was one of affection. All this I had heard from common friends; only a series of annoying accidents had prevented the more interesting means of knowledge which acquaintance with the duchess herself would have afforded.
"You have always," said Gustave, "wanted to know her."
I relit my cigar and puffed thoughtfully. It was true that I had rather wished to know her.
"My belief is," he continued, "that though she says 'anybody,' she means you. She knows what friends we are; she knows you are eager to be among her friends; she would guess that I should ask you first."
I despise and hate a man who is not open to flattery: he is a hard, morose, distrustful, cynical being, doubting the honesty of his friends and the worth of his own self. I leant an ear to Gustave's suggestion.
"What she would not guess," he said, throwing his cigarette into the fireplace and rising to his feet, "is that you would refuse when I did ask you. What shall be the reason? Shocked, are you? Or afraid?"
Gustave spoke as though nothing could either shock or frighten him.
"I'm merely considering whether it will amuse me," I returned. "How long are we asked for?"
"That depends on diplomatic events."
"The mission to Algeria?"
"Why, precisely."
I put my hands in my pockets.
"I should certainly be glad, my dear Gustave," said I, "to meet your sister again."
"We take the boat for Cherbourg to-morrow evening!" he cried triumphantly, slapping me on the back. "And, in my sister's name, many thanks! I will make it clear to the duchess why you come."
"No need to make bad blood between them like that," I laughed.
In fine, I was pleased to go; and, on reflection, there was no reason why I should not go. I said as much to Gustave.
"Seeing that everybody is going out of town and the place will be a desert in a week, I'm certainly not wanted here just now."
"And seeing that the duke is gone to Algeria, we certainly are wanted there," said Gustave.
"And a man should go where he is wanted," said I.
"And a man is wanted," said Gustave, "where a lady bids him come."
"It would," I cried, "be impolite not to go."
"It would be dastardly. Besides, think how you will enjoy the memory of it!"
"The memory?" I repeated, pausing in my eager walk up and down.
"It will be a sweet memory," he said.
"Ah!"
"Because, my friend, it is prodigiously unwise--for you."
"And not for you?"
"Why, no. Lady Cynthia--"
He broke off, content to indicate the shield that protected him. But it was too late to draw back.
"Let it be as unwise," said I, "as it will--"
"Or as the duke is," put in Gustave, with a knowing twinkle in his eye.
"Yet it is a plan as delightful--"
"As the duchess is," said Gustave.
And so, for all the excellent reasons which may be collected from the foregoing conversation,--and if carefully tabulated they would, I am persuaded, prove as numerous as weighty,--I went.
CHAPTER II.
The Significance of a Supper-Table.
The Aycons of Aycon Knoll have always been a hard-headed, levelheaded race. We have had no enthusiasms, few ambitions, no illusions, and not many scandals. We keep our heads on our shoulders and our purses in our pockets. We do not rise very high, but we have never sunk. We abide at the Knoll from generation to generation, deeming our continued existence in itself a service to the state and an honor to the house. We think more highly of ourselves than we admit, and allow ourselves to smile when we walk in to dinner behind the new nobility. We grow just a little richer with every decade, and add a field or two to our domains once in five years. The gaps made by falling rents we have filled