It was not difficult to see that D'Arragon was a sailor. Not only had he the brown face of those who live in the open, but he had the attentive air of one whose waking moments are a watch.
“You look at one as if one were the horizon,” Desiree said to him long afterwards. But it was at this moment in the drawing-room in the Frauengasse that the comparison formed itself in her mind.
His face was rather narrow, with a square chin and straight lips. He was not quick in speech like Charles, but seemed to think before he spoke, with the result that he often appeared to be about to say something, and was interrupted before the words had been uttered.
“Unless my memory is a bad one, your mother was an Englishwoman, monsieur,” said Sebastian, “which would account for your being in the English service.”
“Not entirely,” answered d'Arragon, “though my mother was indeed English and died--in a French prison. But it was from a sense of gratitude that my father placed me in the English service--and I have never regretted it, monsieur.”
“Your father received kindnesses at English hands, after his escape, like many others.”
“Yes, and he was too old to repay them by doing the country any service himself. He would have done it if he could--”
D'Arragon paused, looking steadily at the tall old man who listened to him with averted eyes.
“My father was one of those,” he said at length, “who did not think that in fighting for Bonaparte one was necessarily fighting for France.”
“In England--” he corrected, “in England one may think such things. But not in France, and still less in Dantzig.”
“If one is an Englishman,” replied D'Arragon with a smile, “one may think them where one likes, and say them when one is disposed. It is one of the privileges of the nation, monsieur.”
He made the statement lightly, seeing the humour of it with a cosmopolitan understanding, without any suggestion of the boastfulness of youth. Desiree noticed that his hair was turning grey at the temples.
“I did not know,” he said, turning to her, “that Charles was in Dantzig, much less that he was celebrating so happy an occasion. We ran against each other by accident in the street. It was a lucky accident that allowed me to make your acquaintance so soon after you have become his wife.”