Madame d’Auffray smiled at Beauchamp, to excuse the childishness of the little story she was about to relate; she gave it in the essence, without a commencement or an ending.  She had in fact but two or three hurried minutes before the breakfast-bell would ring; and the fan she opened and shut, and at times shaded her head with, was nearly as explicit as her tongue.

He understood that Renee had staked her glove on his coming within a certain number of hours to the briefest wording of invitation possible.  Owing to his detention by the storm, M. d’Henriel had won the bet, and now insisted on wearing the glove.  ’He is the privileged young madman our women make of a handsome youth,’ said Madame d’Auffray.

Where am I? thought Beauchamp—­in what land, he would have phrased it, of whirlwinds catching the wits, and whipping the passions?  Calmer than they, but unable to command them, and guessing that Renee’s errand of the morning, by which he had lost hours of her, pertained to the glove, he said quiveringly, ‘Madame la Marquise objects?’

‘We,’ replied Madame d’Auffray, ’contend that the glove was not loyally won.  The wager was upon your coming to the invitation, not upon your conquering the elements.  As to his flaunting the glove for a favour, I would ask you, whom does he advertize by that?  Gloves do not wear white; which fact compromises none but the wearer.  He picked it up from the ground, and does not restore it; that is all.  You see a boy who catches at anything to placard himself.  There is a compatriot of yours, a M. Ducie, who assured us you must be with an uncle in your county of Sussex.  Of course we ran the risk of the letter missing you, but the chance was worth a glove.  Can you believe it, M. Beauchamp? it was I, old woman as I am, I who provoked the silly wager.  I have long desired to meet you; and we have little society here, we are desperate with loneliness, half mad with our whims.  I said, that if you were what I had heard of you, you would come to us at a word.  They dared Madame la Marquise to say the same.  I wished to see the friend of Frenchmen, as M. Roland calls you; not merely to see him—­to know him, whether he is this perfect friend whose absolute devotion has impressed my dear sister Renee’s mind.  She respects you:  that is a sentiment scarcely complimentary to the ideas of young men.  She places you above human creatures:  possibly you may not dislike to be worshipped.  It is not to be rejected when one’s influence is powerful for good.  But you leave us to-morrow!’

‘I’ might stay . . .’  Beauchamp hesitated to name the number of hours.  He stood divided between a sense of the bubbling shallowness of the life about him, and a thought, grave as an eye dwelling on blood, of sinister things below it.

‘I may stay another day or two,’ he said, ’if I can be of any earthly service.’

Madame d’Auffray bowed as to a friendly decision on his part, saying, ’It would be a thousand pities to disappoint M. Roland; and it will be offering my brother an amicable chance.  I will send him word that you await him; at least, that you defer your departure as long as possible.  Ah! now you perceive, M. Beauchamp, now you have become aware of our purely infantile plan to bring you over to us, how very ostensible a punishment it would be were you to remain so short a period.’