“Ah!”

“Because, my friend, it is prodigiously unwise—­for you.”

“And not for you?”

“Why, no.  Lady Cynthia—­”

He broke off, content to indicate the shield that protected him.  But it was too late to draw back.

“Let it be as unwise,” said I, “as it will—­”

“Or as the duke is,” put in Gustave, with a knowing twinkle in his eye.

“Yet it is a plan as delightful—­”

“As the duchess is,” said Gustave.

And so, for all the excellent reasons which may be collected from the foregoing conversation,—­and if carefully tabulated they would, I am persuaded, prove as numerous as weighty,—­I went.

CHAPTER II.

The Significance of a Supper-Table.

The Aycons of Aycon Knoll have always been a hard-headed, levelheaded race.  We have had no enthusiasms, few ambitions, no illusions, and not many scandals.  We keep our heads on our shoulders and our purses in our pockets.  We do not rise very high, but we have never sunk.  We abide at the Knoll from generation to generation, deeming our continued existence in itself a service to the state and an honor to the house.  We think more highly of ourselves than we admit, and allow ourselves to smile when we walk in to dinner behind the new nobility.  We grow just a little richer with every decade, and add a field or two to our domains once in five years.  The gaps made by falling rents we have filled by judicious purchases of land near rising towns; and we have no doubt that there lies before us a future as long and prosperous as our past has been.  We are not universally popular, and we see in the fact a tribute to our valuable qualities.

I venture to mention these family virtues and characteristics because it has been thought in some quarters that I displayed them but to a very slight degree in the course of the expedition on which I was now embarked.  The impression is a mistaken one.  As I have said before, I did nothing that was not forced upon me.  Any of my ancestors would, I am sure, have done the same, had they chanced to be thrown under similar circumstances into the society of Mme. de Saint-Maclou and of the other persons whom I was privileged to meet; and had those other persons happened to act in the manner in which they did when I fell in with them.

Gustave maintained his gayety and good spirits unabated through the trials of our voyage to Cherbourg.  The mild mystery that attended our excursion was highly to his taste.  He insisted on our coming without servants.  He persuaded me to leave no address; obliged to keep himself within touch of the Embassy, he directed letters to be sent to Avranches, where, he explained, he could procure them; for, as he thought it safe to disclose when a dozen miles of sea separated us from the possibility of curious listeners, the house to which we were bound stood about ten miles distant from that town, in a retired and somewhat desolate bit of country lining the seashore.