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He added, without giving her time to reply: "I naturally wish to be clear on this point before urging my cause with your sister-in-law." Madame de Treymes seemed in no haste to answer; but after a pause of reflection she said, not unkindly: "My poor Fanny might have asked me that herself." "I beg you to believe that I am not acting as her spokesman," Durham hastily interposed.
"Unity !" broke from Durham; and Madame de Treymes gently suffered his smile. "Of the family tradition, I mean: it introduces new elements. You are a new element." "Thank heaven!" said Durham again. She looked at him singularly. "Yes you may thank heaven. Why isn't it enough to satisfy Fanny?" "Why isn't what enough?"
There was nothing very redoubtable about Madame de Treymes, except perhaps the kindly yet critical observation which she bestowed on her sister-in-law's visitors: the unblinking attention of a civilized spectator observing an encampment of aborigines. Yet before she had addressed ten words to him nibbling at the hard English consonants like nuts he owned the justice of the epithet.
Madame de Treymes, who had moved toward the door, paused at this and faced him, resting her thin brown hands on a slender sofa-back. "How do you propose to show that sense?" she enquired. Durham coloured still more deeply: he saw that she was determined to save her pride by making what he had to say of the utmost difficulty.
Well, he's one of the choicest ornaments of the Jockey Club: very fascinating to the ladies, I believe, but the deuce and all at baccara. Ruined his mother and a couple of maiden aunts already and now Madame de Treymes has put the family pearls up the spout, and is wearing imitation for love of him."
Madame de Treymes' friendly observation of her sister-in-law's visitors resulted in no expression on her part of a desire to renew her study of them. To all appearances, she passed out of their lives when Madame de Malrive's door closed on her; and Durham felt that the arduous task of making her acquaintance was still to be begun.
But you must not think," she added, "that I defend my brother. Fanny must have told you that we have always given her our sympathy." "She has let me infer it from her way of speaking of you." Madame de Treymes arched her dramatic eyebrows. "How cautious you are! I am so straightforward that I shall have no chance with you."
The festivity in question was restricted in numbers, either owing to the difficulty of securing suitable guests, or from a desire not to have it appear that Madame de Treymes' hosts attached any special importance to her presence; but the smallness of the company was counterbalanced by the multiplicity of the courses.
Durham thought he knew enough of it to infer that Madame de Treymes had not been the object of many conscientious scruples on the part of the opposite sex; but this increased rather his sense of the strangeness than of the pathos of her action.
She was a beauty, if beauty, instead of being restricted to the cast of the face, is a pervasive attribute informing the hands, the voice, the gestures, the very fall of a flounce and tilt of a feather. In this impalpable aura of grace Madame de Treymes' dark meagre presence unmistakably moved, like a thin flame in a wide quiver of light.
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