“Maxime!”

“Ah!  You asked me to tell you the truth.  Then, as to your social position.  Now it is excellent; you have been promoted as rapidly as merit could claim, everybody says.  You will be an admiral one of these days.  But in six months you will be nothing at all; you will have resigned your commission, or you will have been dismissed.”

“Allow me”—­

“No.  You are an honest man, the most honorable man I know; after six months’ acquaintance with Sarah Brandon, you will have lost your self-respect so completely, that you will have become a drunkard.  There is your picture.  ‘It’s not flattered!’ you will say.  But you wanted to have it.  And now let us go.”

This time he was determined; and Daniel saw that he would not obtain another word from him, unless he changed his tactics.  He held him back, therefore, a moment; and, as he opened the door, he said,—­

“Maxime, you must pardon me a very innocent deception, which was suggested by your own words.  It is not I who am in love with Miss Sarah Brandon.”

Brevan was so much surprised, he could not stir.

“Who is it, then?” he asked.

“One of my friends.”

“What name?”

“I wish you would render the service I ask of you doubly valuable by not asking me that question,—­at least, not to-day.”

Daniel spoke with such an accent of truth, that not a shadow of doubt remained on Maxime’s mind.  It was not Daniel who had fallen in love with Sarah Brandon.  Brevan did not doubt that for a moment.  But he could not conceal his trouble, and his disappointment even, as he exclaimed,—­

“Well done, Daniel!  Tell me that your ingenuous people cannot deceive anybody!”

However, he said nothing more about it; and, while Daniel was pouring out his excuses, he quietly went back to the fire, and sat down.  After a moment’s silence, he began again,—­

“Let us assume, then, that it is one of your friends who is bewitched?”

“Yes.”

“And the matter is—­serious?”

“Alas!  He talks of marrying that woman.”

Maxime shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and said,—­

“As to that, console yourself.  Sarah will never consent.”

“So far from that, she herself has made the suggestion.”

This time, Maxime raised his head suddenly, and looked stupefied.

“Then your friend must be very rich.”

“He is immensely rich.”

“He bears a great name, and holds a high position?”

“His name is one of the oldest and noblest in the province of Anjou.”

“And he is a very old man?”

“He is sixty-five.”

Brevan struck the marble slab of the mantlepiece with his fist so that it shook, and exclaimed,—­

“Ah, she told me she would succeed!”

And then he added in a very low tone of voice, as if speaking to himself with an indescribable accent of mingled admiration and hatred,—­