"Do you notice," said Madame to me, "that Lucille is in better spirits?"
"Yes--I notice it with pleasure. Good spirits are for the young--and the old."
"I suppose you are right," said Madame. "Before the business of life begins, and after it is over."
Apropos of business, I gave the Vicomtesse at this time an account of my journey to Audierne, and was able to inform her that I had brought back money with me sufficient for her present wants.
While I was thus talking I heard, through my own speech, that Isabella invited the stranger to dine on the following Thursday.
"I have another engagement," he answered, consulting a small note-book. "But that can be conveniently forgotten."
Isabella seemed to like such exceedingly small social change, for she smiled brightly as he rose to take his leave.
To the Vicomtesse he paid a pretty little compliment in French, anticipating much enjoyment on the following Thursday in improving upon his slight acquaintance. He shook hands with me, his gaze fixed on my necktie. He then bowed to Lucille and Alphonse, who were talking together at the end of the room, and made a self-possessed exit.
"Who is your friend?" I asked Isabella bluntly, when the door was closed.
There was something in Isabella's tone that betokened a readiness, or perhaps a desire, to fight Mr. Devar's battles. Had I been a woman, or wiser than I have ever proved myself, I should, no doubt, have ignored this challenge instead of promptly meeting it by my answer:
"You seem to object to him," she said sharply. "Please remember that he is a friend of mine."
"He cannot be one of long standing," I was foolish enough to answer. "For he is not an East Country man, and I never heard of him before."
"As a matter of fact," said Isabella, "I met him at a ball in town last week, and he asked permission to call."
I gave a short laugh, and Isabella looked at me with calm defiance in her eyes. It was, of course, no business of mine, which knowledge probably urged me on to further blunders.
Isabella's mental attitude was a puzzle to me. She was ready enough to supply information respecting Mr. Devar, whose progress towards intimacy had, to say the least of it, been rapid. But she supplied, as I thought, from a small store. She alternately allayed and aroused an anxiety which was natural enough in so old a friend, and to a man who had moved among adventurers nearly all his life. Alfred Gayerson, her brother and my earliest friend, was now in Vienna. Isabella had no one to advise her. She was, I suppose, a forerunner of the advanced young women of to-day, who, with a diminutive knowledge of the world culled from the imaginative writings of females as ignorant, are pleased to consider themselves competent to steer a clean course over the shoals of life.