“Whose carriage is that under your shed?” I asked, sipping my wine.

“It is the carriage of the Duke of Saint-Maclou, sir,” he answered readily enough.

“The duke is here, then?”

“Have you business with him, sir?”

“I did but ask you a simple question,” said I.  “Ah! what’s that?  Who’s that?”

I had been looking out of the window, and my sudden exclamation was caused by this—­that the door of a stable which faced me had opened very gently, and but just wide enough to allow a face to appear for an instant and then disappear.  And it seemed to me that I knew the face, although the sight of it had been too short to make me sure.

“What did you see, sir?” asked the inn-keeper. (The name on his signboard was Jacques Bontet.)

I turned and faced him full.

“I saw someone look out of the stable,” said I.

“Doubtless the stable-boy,” he answered; and his manner was so ordinary, unembarrassed, and free from alarm, that I doubted whether my eyes had not played me a trick, or my imagination played one upon my eyes.

Be that as it might, I had no time to press my host further at that moment; for I heard a step behind me and a voice I knew saying: 

“Bontet, who is this gentleman?”

I turned.  In the doorway of the room stood the Duke of Saint-Maclou.  He was in the same dress as when he had parted from me; he was dusty, his face was pale, and the skin had made bags under his eyes.  But he stood looking at me composedly, with a smile on his lips.

“Ah!” said he, “it is my friend Mr. Aycon.  Bontet, bring me some wine, too, that I may drink with my friend.”  And he added, addressing me:  “You will find our good Bontet most obliging.  He is a tenant of mine, and he will do anything to oblige me and my friends.  Isn’t it so, Bontet?”

The fellow grunted a surly and none too respectful assent, and left the room to fetch the duke his wine.  Silence followed on his departure for some seconds.  Then the duke came up to where I stood, folded his arms, and looked me full in the face.

“It is difficult to lose the pleasure of your company, sir,” he said.

“If you will depart from here alone,” I retorted, “you shall find it the easiest thing in the world.  For, in truth, it is not desire for your society that brings me here.”

He lifted a hand and tugged at his mustache.

“You have, perhaps, been to the convent?” he hazarded.

“I have just come from there,” I rejoined.

“I am not an Englishman,” said he, curling the end of the mustache, “and I do not know how plain an intimation need be to discourage one of your resolute race.  For my part, I should have thought that when a lady accepts the escort of one gentleman, it means that she does not desire that of another.”

He said this with a great air and an assumption of dignity that contrasted strongly with the unrestrained paroxysms of the night before.  I take it that success—­or what seems such—­may transform a man as though it changed his very skin.  But I was not skilled to cross swords with him in talk of that kind, so I put my hands in my pockets and leaned against the shutter and said bluntly: