There was no drawing back; the circumstances positively forbade it, even if a certain smile following fast upon the momentary embarrassment of the Duchess had not prompted him to put himself at her mercy.

“A thousand pardons, Madame la Duchesse,” he said, standing in the doorway. “Je vous dÉrange.”

She rose from her chair composedly, a figure of matured grace and practised courtliness, and above all with an air of what he flattered himself was friendliness. She directed him to a seat.

“The pleasure is unexpected, monsieur,” she said; “but it is a moment for quick decision, I suppose. What is the cue? To be desperate?” here she laughed softly, “or to take a chair? Monsieur has called to see his Grace. I regret exceedingly that a pressing business has called my husband to the town, and he is unlikely to be back for another hour at least. If monsieur—assuming desperation is not the cue—will please to be seated—”

Count Victor was puzzled for a second or two, but came farther into the room, and, seeing the lady resume her seat, he availed himself of her invitation and took the chair she offered.

“Madame la Duchesse,” he went on to say with some evidence of confusion that prejudiced her the more in his favour, “I am, as you see, in the drollest circumstances, and—pardon the bÊtise—time is at the moment the most valuable of my assets.”

“Oh!” she cried with a low laugh that gave evidence of the sunniest disposition in the world—“Oh! that is not a pretty speech, monsieur! But there! you cannot, of course, know my powers of entertainment. Positively there need be no hurry. On my honour, as the true friend of a gentleman who looked very like monsieur, and was, by the way, a compatriot, I repeat there is no occasion for haste. I presume monsieur found no servants—those stupid servants!—to let him into the house, and wisely found an entrance for himself? How droll! It is our way in these barbaric places; people just come and go as they please; we waive ceremony. By the way, monsieur has not done me the honour to confide to me his name.”

“Upon my word, Madame la Duchesse, I—I forget it myself at the moment,” said Count Victor, divining her strategy, but too much embarrassed to play up to her lead. “Perhaps madame may remember.”

She drew down her brows in a comical frown, and then rippled into low laughter. “Now, how in the world should I know if monsieur does not? I, that have never”—here she stared in his face with a solemnity in which her amusement struggled—“never, to my knowledge, seen him before. I have heard the Duke speak of a certain M. Soi-disant! perhaps monsieur is Monsieur Soi-disant?”

“Sans doute, Madame la Duchesse, and madame's very humble servant,” acquiesced Count Victor, relieved to have his first impression of strategy confirmed, and inclining his head.

She looked at him archly and laughed again. “I have a great admiration for your sex, M. Soi-disant,” she said; “my dear Duke compels it, but now and then—now and then—I think it a little stupid. Not to know your own name! I hope monsieur does not hope to go through life depending upon women all the time to set him at ease in his chair. You are obviously not at ease in your chair, Monsieur Soi-disant.”

“It is this coat, Madame la Duchesse,” Count Victor replied, looking down at the somewhat too ample sleeves and skirt; “I fell into it—”

“That is very obvious,” she interrupted, with no effort to conceal her amusement.

“I fell into it by sheer accident, and it fits me like an evil habit, and under the circumstances is as inconvenient to get rid of.”

“And still an excellent coat, monsieur. Let me see; has it not a familiar look? Oh! I remember; it is very like one I have seen with the Duke's Chamberlain—poor fellow! Monsieur has doubtless heard of his accident, and will be glad to learn that he is out of danger, and like to be abroad in a very short time.”

This was a humour touching him too closely; he replied in a monosyllable.

“Perhaps it was the coat gave me the impression that I had seen monsieur somewhere before. He reminds me, as I have said, of a compatriot who was the cause of the Chamberlain's injury.”

“And is now, doubtless, in prison,” added the Count, bent on giving evidence of some inventiveness of his own.

“Nay! by no means,” cried the Duchess. “He was in a cell, but escaped two or three hours ago, as our watchman discovered, and is now probably far away from here.”

“Ah, then,” said Count Victor with nonchalance, “I daresay they will speedily recapture him. If they only knew the way with any of my compatriots it is to put a woman in his path, only she must be a woman of esprit and charm, and she shall engage him, I'll warrant, till the pursuit come up, even if it takes a century and the axe is at the end of it.”

The Duchess coughed.

The Count hemmed.

They both broke into laughter.

“Luckily, then,” said she, “he need have no anxiety on that score, should he meet the lady, for the pursuit is neither hot nor hearty. Between ourselves, monsieur, it is non-existent. If I were to meet this person we speak of I should—but for the terror I know I should feel in his society—tell him that so long as he did not venture within a couple of miles of this castle he was perfectly safe from interference.”

“And yet a dangerous man, Madame la Duchesse,” said Count Victor; “and I have heard the Duke is determined on his punishment, which is of course proper—from his Grace's point of view.”

“Yes, yes! I am told he is a dangerous man, a very monster. The Duke assured me of that, though if I were to tell the truth, Monsieur Soi-disant, I saw no evidence of it in the young gentleman when I met him last night. A most harmless fellow, I assure you. Are monsieur's feet not cold?”

She was staring at his red-heeled dancing-shoes.

“Pas du tout!” he replied promptly, tucking them under his chair. “These experiments in costume are a foible with me.”

There was a step along the corridor outside, which made him snap off his sentence hurriedly and turn listening and apprehensive. Again the Duchess was amused.

“No, monsieur, it is not his Grace yet; you are all impatience to meet him, I see, and my poor company makes little amends for his absence; but it is as I say, he will not be back for another hour. You are interested, doubtless, in the oddities of human nature; for me I am continually laughing at the transparency of the stratagems whereby men like my husband try to lock their hearts up like a garden and throw away the key before they come into the company of their wives. I'm sure your poor feet must be cold. You did not drive? Such a night of snow too! I cannot approve of your foible for dancing-shoes to wade through snow in such weather. As I was saying, you are not only the stupid sex sometimes, but a most transparent one. I will let you into a little secret that may convince you that what I say of our Count What's-his-name not being hunted is true. I see quite clearly that the Duke is delighted to have this scandal of a duel—oh! the shocking things, duels, Monsieur Soi-disant!—shut up. In the forenoon he was mightily vexed with that poor Count What-do-you-call-him for a purely personal reason that I may tell you of later, but mainly because his duty compelled him to secure the other party to the—let us say, outrage. You follow, Monsieur Soi-disant?”

“Parfaitement, Madame la Duchesse,” said Count Victor, wondering where all this led to.

“I am a foolish sentimentalist, I daresay you may think—for a person of my age (are you quite comfortable, monsieur? I fear that chair does not suit you)—I am a foolish sentimentalist, as I have said, and I may tell you I pleaded very hard for the release of this luckless compatriot of yours who was then in the fosse. But, oh dear! his Grace was adamant, as is the way with dukes, at least in this country, and I pleaded in vain.”

“Naturally, madame; his Grace had his duty as a good subject.”

“Doubtless,” said the Duchess; “but there have been occasions in history, they assure me, when good subjects have been none the less nice husbands. Monsieur can still follow me?”

Count Victor smiled and bowed again, and wished to heaven her Grace the Duchess had a little more of the gift of expedition. He had come looking for a sword and found a sermon.

“I know I weary you,” she went on complacently. “I was about to say that while the Duke desires to do his duty, even at the risk of breaking his wife's heart, it was obvious to me he was all the time sorry to have to do it, and when we heard that our Frenchman had escaped I, take my word for it, was not the only one relieved.”

“I do not wonder, madame,” said Montaiglon, “that the subject in this case should capitulate to—to—to the—”

“To the loving husband, you were about to say. La! you are too gallant, monsieur, I declare. And as a matter of fact the true explanation is less to my husband's credit and less flattering to me, for he had his own reasons.”

“One generally has,” reflected the Count aloud.

“Quite! and in his case they are very often mine. Dear Archie! Though he did not think I knew it, I saw clearly that he had his own reasons, as I say, to wish the Frenchman well out of the country. Now could you guess what these reasons were?”

Count Victor confessed with shame that it was beyond him.

“I will tell you. They were not his own interests, and they were not mine, that influenced him; I had not to think very hard to discover that they were the interests of the Chamberlain. I fancy his Grace knows that the less inquiry there is into this encounter the better for all concerned.”

“I daresay, Madame la Duchesse,” agreed Count Victor, “and yet the world speaks well of the Chamberlain, one hears.”

“Woe unto you when all men speak well of you!” quoted the Duchess sententiously.

“It only happens when the turf is in our teeth,” said the Count, “and then De mortuis is a motto our dear friends use more as an excuse than as a moral.”

“I do not like our Chamberlain, monsieur; I may frankly tell you so. I should not be surprised to learn that my husband knows a little more about him than I do, and I give you my word I know enough to consider him hateful.”

“These are most delicate considerations, Madame la Duchesse,” said the Count, vastly charmed by her manner but naturally desirous of the open air. Every step he heard in neighbouring lobbies, every slammed door, spoiled his attention to the lady's confidences, and he had an uneasy sense that she was not wholly unamused at his predicament, however much his friend.

“Delicate considerations, true, but I fear they do not interest Monsieur Soi-disant. How should they indeed? Gossip, monsieur, gossip! At our age, as you might say, we must be chattering. I know you are uncomfortable on that chair. Do, monsieur, please take another.”

This time he was convinced of his first suspicion that she was having her revenge for his tactless remark to her husband, for he had not stirred at all in his chair, but had only reddened, and she had a smile at the corners of her mouth.

“At my age, Madame la Duchesse, we are quite often impertinent fools. There is, however, but one age—the truly golden. We reach it when we fall first in love, and there love keeps us. His Grace, Madame la Duchesse, is, I am sure, the happiest of men.”

She was seated opposite him. Leaning forward a little, she put forth her hand in a motherly, unembarrassed way, and placed it for a moment on his knee, looking into his face, smiling.

“Good boy! good boy!” she said.

And then she rose as if to hint that it was time for him to go.

“I see you are impatient; perhaps you may meet the Duke on his way back.”

“Charmed, Madame la Duchesse, I assure you,” said the Count with a grimace, and they both fell into laughing.

She recovered herself first to scan the shoes and coat again. “How droll!” said she. “Ah, monsieur, you are delightful in your foibles, but I wish it had looked like any other coat than Simon Mac-Taggart's. I have never seen his without wondering how many dark secrets were underneath the velvet. Had this coat of yours been a perfect fit, believe me I had not expected much from you of honour or of decency. Oh! there I go on chattering again, and you have said scarcely twenty words.”

“Believe me, Madame la Duchesse, it is because I can find none good enough to express my gratitude,” said Count Victor, making for the door.

“Pooh! Monsieur Soi-disant, a fig for your gratitude! Would you have me inhospitable to a guest who would save me even the trouble of opening my door? And that, by the way, reminds me, monsieur, that you have not even hinted at what you might be seeking his Grace for? Could it be—could it be for a better fit in coats?”

“For a mere trifle, madame, no more than my sword.”

“Your sword, monsieur? I know nothing of Monsieur Soi-disant's sword, but I think I know where is one might serve his purpose.”

With these words she went out of the room, hurried along the corridor, and returned in a moment or two with Count Victor's weapon, which she dragged back by its belt as if she loathed an actual contact with the thing itself.

“There!” she said, affecting a shudder. “A mouse and a rapier, they are my bitterest horrors. If you could only guess what a coward I am! Good night, monsieur, and I hope—I hope”—she laughed as she hung on the wish a moment—“I hope you will meet his Grace on the way. If so, you may tell him 'tis rather inclement weather for the night air—at his age,” and she laughed again. “If you do not see him—as is possible—come back soon; look! my door bids you in your own language—Revenez bientÔt. I am sure he will be charmed to see you, and to make his delight the more I shall never mention you were here tonight.”

She went along the lobby and looked down the stair to see that the way was clear; came back and offered her hand.

“Madame la Duchesse, you are very magnanimous,” he said, exceedingly grateful.

“Imprudent, rather,” she corrected him.

“Magnanimity and Prudence are cousins who, praise le bon Dieu! never speak to each other, and the world is very much better for it.” He pointed to the motto on the panel. “I may never come back, madame,” said he, “but at least I shall never forget.”

“Au plaisir de vous revoir, Monsieur Soi-disant,” she said in conclusion, and went into her room and closed the door.

“Now there's a darling!” said the Duchess as she heard his footsteps softly departing. “Archie was just such another—at his age.”