"There are several points, Monsieur," he said, angrily, "upon which I demand an explanation."
"All right--but I am not going to quarrel with you, Giraud."
I looked very straight at Isabella, whose eyes, however, did not fall under mine. But I think she knew that I blamed her for this.
"You have insulted a friend of Miss Gayerson's."
"A matter," was my reply, "which rests between Miss Gayerson and myself. I have rid her house of a scoundrel--that is all."
I thought Isabella was going to speak, but she closed her pale lips again and glanced at Alphonse.
"You have been supplying Madame de Clericy with money during the last six months?" said he.--"Yes."
"Your own money?"--"Most certainly"--and I was soft-hearted enough to omit reminding him that he owed me a thousand francs.
"You have repeatedly told me," pursued Alphonse, who seemed to be nursing his anger into an artificial life, "that you are penniless. Whence comes this money?"
"And if Madame de Clericy fails to repay you, you will be ruined?"
"And you ask me to believe that," laughed Giraud, scornfully.
"No," answered I, going towards the door, for my temper was rising, and there remained but that way of avoiding a quarrel. "You may do as you like."
As I turned to close the door I caught sight of Isabella's face, and it wore a look that took me back to school holidays, when she and I wandered in the Hopton woods together, and were, I dare say, sentimental enough.
"Les plus généreux sont toujours ceux qui n'ont rien."
The events in France, stupendous in themselves, seemed to have shaken the nerves of nations. That great sleeping Bear of the North roused itself, and in its clumsy awakening put a heavy paw through the Treaty of Paris. The Americans--our brothers in thought, speech and energetic purpose--raised a great cry against us in that we had allowed the ill-fated Alabama to leave our shores equipped for destruction. There was a spirit of strife and contention in the atmosphere of the world. Friendly nations nursed an imaginary grievance against their neighbours, and those that had one brought it out, as a skeleton from a cupboard, and inspected it in public.
In a school playground the rumour of a fight stirs latent passions, and doubles many a peaceful fist. France and Prussia, grasping each other by the throat, seemed to have caused such an electric disturbance in the atmosphere of Europe, and many Englishmen were for fighting some one--they did not care whom.