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"Unfortunately it is we who..." M. d'Ormesson was beginning, when from behind him M. de La Tour d'Azyr's voice cut in crisply: "This interest on your part in M. Moreau, dear Countess..." He broke off, observing a vague challenge in the air with which she confronted him. But indeed his sentence did not need completing. There was a vaguely awkward pause. And then she looked at M. d'Ormesson.
"M. de La Tour d'Azyr's obligations..." she was beginning: then she broke off to answer shortly: "Oh, he refused." "So, so. He must, of course, whatever it may have cost him. Yet in his place I should have counted the cost as nothing. But men are different, you see." He sighed. "Also in your place, had that been so, I think I should have left the matter there. But then..."
La Tour d'Azyr's words were but as a move in a game of chess, calculated to exasperate his opponent into some such counter-move as this a counter-move that left him entirely at the other's mercy. M. le Marquis looked on, very white save where M. de Vilmorin's finger-prints began slowly to colour his face; but he said nothing more.
Leandre leapt up to answer him, white in the face, tense and quivering with excitement. "She left the theatre in the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr's carriage immediately after the performance. We heard him offer to drive her to this inn." Andre-Louis glanced at the timepiece on the overmantel. He seemed unnaturally calm. "That would be an hour ago rather more. And she has not yet arrived?"
Not that the death of Philippe de Vilmorin lay heavily upon M. de La Tour d'Azyr's conscience. He had accounted himself fully justified of his action.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr's engagement in the country on that Sunday was with M. de Kercadiou. To fulfil it he drove out early in the day to Meudon, taking with him in his pocket a copy of the last issue of "Les Actes des Apotres," a journal whose merry sallies at the expense of the innovators greatly diverted the Seigneur de Gavrillac.
La Tour d'Azyr's face had flamed scarlet before that sneer. "Oh," Andre-Louis raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, a man considering. He delivered himself slowly. "Because, monsieur, you prefer the easy victim the Lagrons and Vilmorins of this world, mere sheep for your butchering. That is why." And then the Marquis struck him. Andre-Louis stepped back.
To calm him, he clung to the conviction that the issue could not really be very serious. If the obligations of Philippe's honour compelled him to cross swords with the man he had struck, M. de La Tour d'Azyr's birth compelled him no less to do no serious hurt to the unfledged lad he had so grievously provoked. M. le Marquis, after all, was a man of honour.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr's concern for Aline on that morning of the duel when he had found her half-swooning in Mme. de Plougastel's carriage had been of a circumspection that betrayed nothing of his real interest in her, and therefore had appeared no more than natural in one who must account himself the cause of her distress.
And now, whilst battle and confusion spread with the speed of fire, overflowing from the theatre into the street itself, La Tour d'Azyr's box, which had become the main object of the attack of the bourgeoisie, had also become the rallying ground for such gentlemen as were present in the theatre and for those who, without being men of birth themselves, were nevertheless attached to the party of the nobles.
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