With infinite grace the Chevalier put a knee to the ground, and kissed my hand.

‘Madame will be good enough to excuse my present appearance,’ he said, ’in consideration of its being the only means by which I could put myself on the path of honour.’

‘It is then an evasion?’ said my husband gravely.

’My dear Viscount, do not give yourself the airs of a patriarch.  They do not suit with your one-and-twenty years, even though you are the model of husbands.  Tell me, where is your hero?’

‘The Duke?  He is before Thionville.’

’I shall be at his feet in another day.  Tell me how goes the war.  What cities are falling before our arms?’

He asked of victories; M. de Bellaise asked of his sister.  ’Oh! well, well, what do I know?’ he answered lightly, as if the matter were beneath his consideration; and when I inquired about his child, he actually made a grimace, and indeed he had barely seen her, for she had been sent out to be nursed at a farmhouse, and he did not even recollect her name.  I shall never forget how he stared, when at the sound of a little cry my husband opened the door and appeared with our little Gaspard, now five months old, laughing and springing in his arms, and feeling for the gold on his uniform.  The count had much the same expression with which I have seen a lady regard me when I took a caterpillar in my hand.

‘Ah! ah!’ cried our Chevalier; ’with all his legs and arms too!  That is what comes of marrying an Englishwoman.’ [he did not know I was within hearing, for I had gone in to give Tryphena orders about the room he would occupy.] ‘Beside, it is a son.’

’I hope one day to have a daughter whom I shall love the more, the more she resembles her mother,’ said my husband, to tease him.

’Bah!  You will not have to detest her keeping you back from glory!  Tell me, Philippe, could a lettre de cachet reach me here?’

‘We are on French soil.  What have you been doing, Armand?’

’Only flying from inglorious dullness, my friend.  Do not be scandalized, but let me know how soon I can reach the hero of France, and enroll myself as a volunteer.’

’The Duke is at Binche.  I must return thither tomorrow.  You had better eat and sleep here tonight, and then we can decide what is to be done.’

‘I may do that,’ the youth said, considering.  ’My grandfather could hardly obtain an order instantaneously, and I have a fair start.’

So M. de Bellaise lent him some clothes, and he appeared at supper as a handsome lively-looking youth, hardly come to his full height, for he was only seventeen, with a haughty bearing, and large, almost fierce dark eyes, under eyebrows that nearly met.

At supper he told us his story.  He was, as you know the only scion of the old house of Aubepine, his father having been killed in a duel, and his mother dying at his birth.  His grandparents bred him up with the most assiduous care, but (as my husband told me) it was the care of pride rather than of love.  When still a mere boy, they married him to poor little Cecile de Bellaise, younger still, and fresh from her convent, promising, on his vehement entreaty, that so soon as the succession should be secured by the birth of a son, he should join the army.