“What is it, then, that you really love?” I said.

She gave me a supercilious look and said, in a hard voice, “Nothing, sir.”

I must confess I was hurt.  I could not see that I had done anything to lay myself open to so harsh an answer.  No doubt I was only a servant.  But why had she come and sat beside me if she did not want to talk?  I was glad when the dinner was over and we went into the drawing-room.  Madame Laroque, the widowed mother of Marguerite, began to ask M. Bevallan about the new opera in Paris; he was unable to reply, so, as I had seen the work in Italy before it was produced in France, I gave her a description of it.  I am afraid I forgot myself with Madame Laroque—­a fine-looking, cultivated woman of forty years of age.  Flattered by the way in which she treated me entirely as her equal, I insensibly glided from theatrical topics to fashionable gossip, and just stopped in time in an anecdote about my tour in Russia.  A few more words and she would have learnt that her humble steward, Maxime Odiot—­as I am now called—­ was a man with very aristocratic connections.

In order to hide my embarrassment, I moved towards the table where some of the guests were playing whist.  This led to my committing a blunder which, I fear, may make my position a difficult one.  Among the whist-players was a Mlle. de Porhoet-Gael, eighty-eight years of age and full of strange crotchets.  The last descendant of the noblest of Breton families, she lived, so Madame Laroque told me, on an income of forty pounds a year, her fortune having been spent in vainly fighting for the succession to a great estate in Spain.  She was talking about it to her partner when I came up.

“The estate belongs to me,” she was saying.  “My father told me so a hundred times, and the persons who are trying to take it from me have no more connection with my family than this handsome young gentleman has.”

And she designated me with a look and a movement of her head.  No doubt she did not mean to imply that because I was a steward I was of mean birth; but I was stung by her remark, and forgetting myself, I replied rather sharply, “You are mistaken, madam, in thinking that I am unrelated to your family.”

“You will have to prove that to me, young man.”

Confused and ashamed, I withdrew into the corner and tried to talk to Mlle. Helouin about poetry and art, but at last, upset and distracted, I arose and walked out of the room.  Mlle. de Porhoet followed me.

“Monsieur Odiot,” she said, “would you mind seeing me home?  My servant has not arrived, and I am growing too feeble now to walk without help.”

Naturally, I went with her.

“What did you mean,” she said, as we walked on together, “by claiming to be a relation of mine?”

“I hope,” I replied very humbly, “that you will pardon a jest that—­”

“A jest!” she interrupted.  “Is a matter touching my honour a jest?  I see; a remark which would be an insult if addressed to a man becomes only a jest when it is levelled at an old, unprotected woman.”