“And Count Ville-Handry?”
“Upon my word,” replied the old beau ironically, “the good count can
boast of a valet who knows almost as much as Rachel, the famous English
enameller. At a little distance you would have sworn that he was
sixteen years old, and that he was going, not to be married, but to be
confirmed.”
“And how did he look?”
“Restless, I think.”
“He might well be,” observed a stout, elderly gentleman, who was said
not to be very happily married.
Everybody laughed; but a very young man, a mere youth, who did not catch
the joke, said,--
“Why so?”
A man of about thirty years, a perfect model of elegance, whom the
others called, according to the degree of intimacy which they could
claim, either “Your Grace,” or “Duke” simply replied,--
“Because, my dear viscount, Miss Brandon is one of those ladies who
never are married. They are courted; they are worshipped; they make
us commit a thousand follies for their sakes; they allow us to ruin
ourselves, and, finally, to blow our brains out for them, all right! But
to bear our name, never!”
“It is true,” said Brevan, “that they tell a number of stories about
her; but it is all gossip. However”--
“You certainly would not ask,” replied the duke, “that I should prove
her to have been brought before a police-court, or to have escaped from
the penitentiary?”