“It is,” Madame de Chantonnay had maintained throughout the months of January and February—“it is an affair of the heart.” She continued to hold this opinion with, however, a shade less conviction, well into a cold March.
“It is an affair of the heart, Abbe,” she said. “Allez! I know what I talk of. It is an affair of the heart and nothing more. There is some one in England: some blonde English girl. They are always washing, I am told. And certainly they have that air—like a garment that has been too often to the blanchisseuse and has lost its substance. A beautiful skin, I allow you. But so thin—so thin.”
“The skin, madame?” inquired the Abbe Touvent, with that gentle and cackling humour in which the ordained of any Church may indulge after a good dinner.
The Abbe Touvent had, as a matter of fact, been Madame de Chantonnay's most patient listener through the months of suspense that followed Loo Barebone's sudden disappearance. Needless to say he agreed ardently with whatever explanation she put forward. Old ladies who give good dinners to a Low Church British curate, or an abbe of the Roman confession, or, indeed, to the needy celibate exponents of any creed whatsoever, may always count upon the active conversational support of their spiritual adviser. And it is not only within the fold of Papacy that careful Christians find the road to heaven made smooth by the arts of an efficient cook.
“You know well enough what I mean, malicious one,” retorted the lady, arranging her shawl upon her fat shoulders.
“I always think,” murmured the Abbe, sipping his digestive glass of eau-de-vie d'Armagnac, which is better than any cognac of Charente—“I always think that to be thin shows a mean mind, lacking generosity.”
“Take my word for it,” pursued Madame de Chantonnay, warming to her subject, “that is the explanation of the young man's disappearance. They say the government has taken some underhand way of putting him aside. One does not give credence to such rumours in these orderly times. No: it is simply that he prefers the pale eyes of some Mees to glory and France. Has it not happened before, Abbe?”
“Ah! Madame—” another sip of Armagnac.
“And will it not happen again? It is the heart that has the first word and the last. I know—I who address you, I know!”
And she touched her breast where, very deeply seated it is to be presumed, she kept her own heart.
“Ah! Madame. Who better?” murmured the Abbe.
“Na, na!” exclaimed Madame de Chantonnay, holding up one hand, heavy with rings, while with the other she gathered her shawl closer about her as if for protection. “Now you tread on dangerous ground, wicked one—WICKED! And you so demure in your soutane!”
But the Abbe only laughed and held up his small glass after the manner of any abandoned layman drinking a toast.
“Madame,” he said, “I drink to the hearts you have broken. And now I go to arrange the card tables, for your guests will soon be coming.”
It was, in fact, Madame de Chantonnay's Thursday evening to which were bidden such friends as enjoyed for the moment her fickle good graces. The Abbe Touvent was, so to speak, a permanent subscriber to these favours. The task was easy enough, and any endowed with a patience to listen, a readiness to admire that excellent young nobleman, Albert de Chantonnay, and the credulity necessary to listen to the record (more hinted at than clearly spoken) of Madame's own charms in her youth, could make sure of a game of dominoes on the evening of the third Thursday in the month.
The Abbe bustled about, drawing cards and tables nearer to the lamps, away from the draught of the door, not too near the open wood fire. His movements were dainty, like those of an old maid of the last generation. He hissed through his teeth as if he were working very hard. It served to stimulate a healthy excitement in the Thursday evening of Madame de Chantonnay.
“Oh, I am not uneasy,” said that lady, as she watched him. She had dined well and her digestion had outlived those charms to which she made such frequent reference. “I am not uneasy. He will return, more or less sheepish. He will make some excuse more or less inadequate. He will tell us a story more or less creditable. Allez! Oh, you men. If you intend that chair for Monsieur de Gemosac, it is the wrong one. Monsieur de Gemosac sits high, but his legs are short; give him the little chair that creaks. If he sits too high he is apt to see over the top of one's cards. And he is so eager to win—the good Marquis.”
“Then he will come to-night despite the cold? You think he will come, Madame?”
“I am sure of it. He has come more frequently since Juliette came to live at the chateau. It is Juliette who makes him come, perhaps. Who knows?”
The Abbe stopped midway across the floor and set down the chair he carried with great caution.
“Madame is incorrigible,” he said, spreading out his hands. “Madame would perceive a romance in a cradle.”
“Well, one must begin somewhere, Materialist. Once it was for me that the guests crowded to my poor Thursdays. But now it is because Albert is near. Ah! I know it. I say it without jealousy. Have you noticed, my dear Abbe, that he has cut his whiskers a little shorter—a shade nearer to the ear? It is effective, eh?”
“It gives an air of hardihood,” assented the Abbe. “It lends to that intellectual face something martial. I would almost say that to the timorous it might appear terrible and overbearing.”
Thus they talked until the guests began to arrive, and for Madame de Chantonnay the time no doubt seemed short enough. For no one appreciated Albert with such a delicacy of touch as the Abbe Touvent.
The Marquis de Gemosac and Juliette were the last to arrive. The Marquis looked worn and considerably aged. He excused himself with a hundred gestures of despair for being late.
“I have so much to do,” he whispered. “So much to think of. We are leaving no stone unturned, and at last w............