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Updated: May 4, 2025
Seldom, as I should suppose, has such a mixed skein of good and evil, of fatality and happiness, been spun from material no more substantial than a sportive lady's idle freak. "By the way, Mr. Aycon," said the duke, after we had drunk our toast, "I have had a message from the magistrate at Avranches requesting our presence to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock.
She was hardly out of breath this time; and she appeared composed and in good spirits. "I thought for a moment you'd forgotten me, but I knew you wouldn't do that, Mr. Aycon." Could I resist such trust? "Forget you, madame?" I cried. "I would as soon forget " "So I knew you'd wait for me." "Here I am, waiting faithfully," said I. "That's right," said the duchess. "Take this, please, Mr. Aycon."
"I'm off." "But he'll see you!" cried the girl. "He is but a half-mile off." "Mr. Aycon could take the side-path," said the duchess. "The duke would see him before he reached it," said the girl. "He would be in sight for nearly fifty yards." "Couldn't I hide in the bushes?" I asked.
Charmed to see how she greeted me, I had not the heart to tell her that her peril was not past; nor did she give me the opportunity, for went on directly: "And you are wounded? But not badly, not badly, Mr. Aycon?" "Who told you I was wounded?" "Why, the duke. He said that you had been shot by a thief, and were very badly hurt; and and " She stopped, blushing.
"Oh, dear!" laughed the duchess. "Oh, what fun, Mr. Aycon!" "It seems to me rather a serious matter," I ventured to observe. Jean evidently thought so; he nodded solemnly over his cheroot. The duchess still laughed; indeed, she was wiping her eyes with her handkerchief. "What an opinion to have of me!" she gasped at last. "I'm not coming with you, Mr. Aycon."
Unfortunately, however, it was to become more complicated still; for the duchess, turning to the English tongue again, laid a hand on my arm and said in her most coaxing tones: "And you, my dear Mr. Aycon, are going to stay a few days in Avranches." "Not an hour!" would have expressed the resolve of my intellect. But we are not all intellect; and what I actually said was: "What for?"
And the duke went and caught her by the shoulder and said: "Come, don't be silly, mother. We can settle our accounts with Mr. Aycon in another way than this." His touch and words seemed to sober her or perhaps her passion had run its course.
I munched my bread and drank my wine, thinking, by a whimsical turn of thought, of Gustave de Berensac and his horror at the table laid for three. Soon I laid down my napkin, and the duke held out his cigarette case toward me: "And now, Mr. Aycon, if I'm not keeping you up " "I do not feel sleepy," said I. "It is the same for both of us," he reminded me, shrugging his shoulders.
"None to remind her of her mother's shame; none to lay snares for her; none to remind her of the beauty which has brought so much woe on her; no men to disturb her life with their angry conflicting passions. Does not the picture attract you, Mr. Aycon?" "As a picture," said I, "it is almost perfect. There is but one blemish in it." "A blemish? I do not perceive it."
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