CHAPTER VII

AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH

Renee was downcast.  Had she not coquetted?  The dear young Englishman had reduced her to defend herself, the which fair ladies, like besieged garrisons, cannot always do successfully without an attack at times, which, when the pursuer is ardent, is followed by a retreat, which is a provocation; and these things are coquettry.  Her still fresh convent-conscience accused her of it pitilessly.  She could not forgive her brother, and yet she dared not reproach him, for that would have inculpated Nevil.  She stepped on to the Piazzetta thoughtfully.  Her father was at Florian’s, perusing letters from France.  ’We are to have the marquis here in a week, my child,’ he said.  Renee nodded.  Involuntarily she looked at Nevil.  He caught the look, with a lover’s quick sense of misfortune in it.

She heard her brother reply to him:  ’Who? the Marquis de Rouaillout?  It is a jolly gaillard of fifty who spoils no fun.’

‘You mistake his age, Roland,’ she said.

‘Forty-nine, then, my sister.’

‘He is not that.’

‘He looks it.’

‘You have been absent.’

’Probably, my arithmetical sister, he has employed the interval to grow younger.  They say it is the way with green gentlemen of a certain age.  They advance and they retire.  They perform the first steps of a quadrille ceremoniously, and we admire them.’

‘What’s that?’ exclaimed the Comte de Croisnel.  ’You talk nonsense, Roland.  M. le marquis is hardly past forty.  He is in his prime.’

’Without question, mon pere.  For me, I was merely offering proof that he can preserve his prime unlimitedly.’

‘He is not a subject for mockery, Roland.’

‘Quite the contrary; for reverence!’

‘Another than you, my boy, and he would march you out.’

‘I am to imagine, then, that his hand continues firm?’

’Imagine to the extent of your capacity; but remember that respect is always owing to your own family, and deliberate before you draw on yourself such a chastisement as mercy from an accepted member of it.’

Roland bowed and drummed on his knee.

The conversation had been originated by Renee for the enlightenment of Nevil and as a future protection to herself.  Now that it had disclosed its burden she could look at him no more, and when her father addressed her significantly:  ’Marquise, you did me the honour to consent to accompany me to the Church of the Frari this afternoon?’ she felt her self-accusation of coquettry biting under her bosom like a thing alive.

Roland explained the situation to Nevil.