“Bring him here, please.”

“Tyrant,” she answered playfully, “the Count shall come.”

He brought a chair.  “Take this; you are pale.  You have been ill.”  Bringing another, he seated himself before me and fanned himself with his hat.

Mrs. Munster came back with the Count, an elderly man, and Desmond rose to meet him, keeping his hand on the back of his chair.  They spoke French.  The freedom of their conversation precluded the idea of my understanding it.  The Count made a remark about me.  Desmond replied, glancing at me, and both pulled their mustaches.  The Count was called away soon, and Desmond resumed his chair.

“I understood you,” I said.

“The deuce you did.”

He placed his hat over a vase of flowers, which tipping over, he leisurely righted, and bending toward me, said: 

“It was in battle.”

“Yes.”

“And women like you, pure, with no vice of blood, sometimes are tempted, struggle, and suffer.”

His words, still more his voice, made we wince.

“Even drawn battles bring their scars,” I replied.

“Convince me beyond all doubt that a woman can reason with her impulses, or even fathom them, and I will be in your debt.”

“Maybe—­but Ben is coming.”

He looked at me strangely.

“You must find this very dull, Cassandra,” said Ben, joining us.

“Cassandra,” said Desmond, “are you bored?”

The accent with which he spoke my name set my pulses striking like a clock.  I got up mechanically, as Ben directed.

“They are going to supper.  There’s game.  Des.  Munster told me to take the northeast corner of the table.”

“I shall take the southwest, then,” he replied, nodding to a tall gentleman who passed with Adelaide.  When we left him, he was observing a carved oak chair, in occult sympathy probably with the grain of the wood.  Nature strikes us with her phenomena at times when other resources are not at hand.

We were compelled to wait at the door of the supper-room, the jam was so great.

“What fairy story do you like best?” asked Ben

“I know which you like.”

“Well?”

“Bluebeard.  You have an affinity with Sister Ann in the tower.”

“Do you think I see nothing ’but the sun which makes a dust and the grass which looks green?’ I believe you like Bluebeard, too.”

That was a great joke, at which we both laughed.

When I saw Desmond again, he was surrounded by men, the French Count among them, drinking champagne.  He held a bottle, and was talking fast.  The others were laughing.  His listless, morose expression had disappeared; in the place of a brutal-tempered, selfish, bored man, I saw a brilliant, jovial gentleman.  Which was the real man?

“Finish your jelly,” said Ben.

“I prefer looking at your brother.”