you say?” she said eagerly.
“Yes, of course, what’s wrong with that?”
“But nothing is wrong! It’s all just as I said!—Among his aides, now,” she said persuasively, “did you not notice a young man, with a little moustache, about twenty-five years old, dressed in the uniform of a captain in the French army?—Think now, my boy,” she went on coaxingly—“a young man—much younger than the other officers on the Marshal’s staff?”
“Perhaps I did,” he said impatiently. “How should I remember now? What difference does it make?”
“Because that young man, my dear,” the Countess patiently explained, “that you saw standing there with the Marshal is the young Marquis—this woman’s son.”
He stared at her with fascinated disbelief.
“And do you mean to tell me,” he said presently, “that because I may have seen someone like that standing in a great crowd of people three years ago, you had the gall to tell that woman that I knew her son—that we were friends?”
“No, no,” the Countess said evasively, a little nervously. “I didn’t tell her that, my dear. I’m sure I didn’t tell her that. She must have misunderstood me. All I said was that you saw her son when he was in America. I’m sure that was all I said. And that was true, wasn’t it? You did see him, didn’t you?” she said triumphantly.
He stared at her, with mouth ajar, unable for a moment to comprehend the full enormity of such deception. Then he closed his jaws with a stubborn snap, and said:
“All right. You got yourself into this, now you get out of it. I’m not going with you.”
The old woman’s eyes were suddenly sharp with apprehension. She leaned forward, clutched him by the arm, and said pleadingly:
“Oh, my boy, you wouldn’t do a thing like that to me, would you? Think what it means to me—the humiliation you would cause me now if you refused to go.”
“I can’t help that. You had no right to make arrangements with the woman, in the first place, before you spoke to me. Even that wouldn’t matter so much if you hadn’t told her that other story about her son and me. That’s the reason she’s inviting me—because she thinks her son and I were friends. How can I accept such an invitation—take advantage
