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Updated: June 14, 2025
"Permit me to help Monsieur," he went on. "Monsieur will pardon me, but possibly this may be some romance." He shrugged his shoulders, but with such an air of civility and respect that Verdayne could not quarrel with him. "At any rate, it is not my business to inquire. For the time it is merely my end to serve Monsieur well. Be seated for a moment while I make coffee and bring rolls and butter.
It was also a secret source of disappointment to certain younger feminine hearts as well, who in the days of his youth, and even in the ripeness of later years, had regarded Paul Verdayne with eyes that found him good to look upon. But the young politician had never been a woman's man.
And he enjoyed sitting at that little table where his father perhaps sat the night he had first seen her who became his love. And Paul pictured to himself that first meeting. He tried to imagine that he was Paul Verdayne, and that shortly his lady would come in with her stately tread, and take her seat, and be waited upon by her elderly attendant.
And Paul knew well enough that if a good player once becomes unnerved, his luck, for some strange reason, will change with his mood, and no efforts, however bold or desperate, will avail him anything. It amazed Verdayne beyond measure that the lady could play such a game with so consummate a skill and so much evidence of experience.
They were genuinely pleased to see Paul and insisted on keeping him for luncheon. The conversation drifted to his western trip and other less personal things and not again did he have an opportunity to talk alone with Opal. Paul took his departure soon after, promising to return for dinner, and to bring Verdayne with him. Then, he resolved to himself, he would tell Opal why he had come.
He was obeying the Law! And his mother would not fail to understand. Verdayne must have loved his mother like this! O God, Love was a fearful thing, he thought, to wreck a life a terrible thing, even a hideous thing but in spite of everything it was all that was worth living for and dying for!
And yet Verdayne also knew how unavailing were all such attempts to drown the sorrow that had so shocked the Boy's sensitive spirit. As he gazed regretfully at the Boy across the dinner table, the butler placed a cablegram before him. Receiving a nod of permission from his hostess, he hastily tore open the envelope and paled at its contents.
But something had aroused the young fellow's passing interest, and now nothing would satisfy him save that he must hear all about America; and so, for a full hour, as best he could, Verdayne described the country of the far West as he remembered it. "Nothing in America appealed to me so strongly as the gigantic prairies," he said at last.
They dismounted and, gathering around Peter, discussed the situation quickly. It was agreed at length that Verdayne, with Andrieff and Alexis, should pass the gate and proceed to the château to reconnoitre, while Peter remained with the others at the gate until they should return. Paul started forward therefore with the overseer and Peter's cousin.
A few moments of desultory conversation that was of no interest to Paul and then the Count proposed a game of écarté, to which Verdayne and Ledoux assented readily enough. But not so our Boy! Ecarté! Bah! When did a boy of twenty ever want to play cards within sound of the rustle of a petticoat? and such a petticoat!
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