Having no designs, he was neither dupe nor sceptic; but he felt oddly entangled, and the dream of his holiday had fled like morning’s beams, as a self-deception will at a very gentle shaking.

CHAPTER XXV

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOAT

Madame d’Auffray passed Renee, whispering on her way to take her seat at the breakfast-table.

Renee did not condescend to whisper.  ‘Roland will be glad,’ she said aloud.

Her low eyelids challenged Beauchamp for a look of indifference.  There was more for her to unbosom than Madame d’Auffray had revealed, but the comparative innocence of her position in this new light prompted her to meet him defiantly, if he chose to feel injured.  He was attracted by a happy contrast of colour between her dress and complexion, together with a cavalierly charm in the sullen brows she lifted; and seeing the reverse of a look of indifference on his face, after what he had heard of her frivolousness, she had a fear that it existed.

‘Are we not to have M. d’Henriel to-day? he amuses me,’ the baronne d’Orbec remarked.

‘If he would learn that he was fashioned for that purpose!’ exclaimed little M. Livret.

’Do not ask young men for too much head, my friend; he would cease to be amusing.’

‘D’Henriel should have been up in the fields at ten this morning,’ said M. d’Orbec.  ‘As to his head, I back him for a clever shot.’

‘Or a duelling-sword,’ said Renee.  ’It is a quality, count it for what we will.  Your favourite, Madame la Baronne, is interdicted from presenting himself here so long as he persists in offending me.’

She was requested to explain, and, with the fair ingenuousness which outshines innocence, she touched on the story of the glove.

Ah! what a delicate, what an exciting, how subtle a question!

Had M. d’Henriel the right to possess it? and, having that, had he the right to wear it at his breast?

Beauchamp was dragged into the discussion of the case.

Renee waited curiously for his judgement.

Pleading an apology for the stormy weather, which had detained him, and for his ignorance that so precious an article was at stake, he held, that by the terms of the wager, the glove was lost; the claim to wear it was a matter of taste.

’Matters of taste, monsieur, are not, I think, decided by weapons in your country?’ said M. d’Orbec.

‘We have no duelling,’ said Beauchamp.

The Frenchman imagined the confession to be somewhat humbling, and generously added, ’But you have your volunteers—­a magnificent spectacle of patriotism and national readiness for defence!’

A shrewd pang traversed Beauchamp’s heart, as he looked back on his country from the outside and the inside, thinking what amount of patriotic readiness the character of the volunteering signified, in the face of all that England has to maintain.  Like a politic islander, he allowed the patriotic spectacle to be imagined; reflecting that it did a sort of service abroad, and had only to be unmasked at home.