Читать книгу The Wounded Name - D. K. Broster - Страница 13

L'Oiseleur did pay his call at the Hôtel de Courtomer, but, enormously to Laurent's disappointment, it was when he himself happened to be out. Mme de Courtomer reported that he had said he was on his way back to Brittany in a day or two, so Laurent concluded that the last picture he would have of him would be of his standing with the lady in green and silver under the filigree lamp, looking so deeply annoyed.

But two days later, as he chanced to walk down the Tuileries garden, he caught sight, amid a tolerable crowd, of two people in front of him who gave him a start. He saw only their backs; but one undoubtedly was L'Oiseleur's. Yet he had on his arm a lady who was obviously not Mme de Morsan. For one thing, she was not so tall—she only came up to her escort's shoulder; for another, from below her bonnet escaped a tendril of bright bronze; and for a third, Aymar de la Rocheterie's own head was bent down towards her in a way it had shown no sign of doing to Mme de Morsan. They were obviously talking very intimately—so intimately that the self-denying Laurent slackened his faster pace lest he should overtake them; and they were soon lost in the crowd.

Was that the real cousin, the heroine of the exploit at Chalais, the member of his family who shared his Northern blood—the lady whose unhappy marriage to a roué might very well have been the cause of his visit to England, the lady who had ... perhaps ... the charge of his heart?

This question Laurent asked of the unresponsive facade of the Tuileries as he strong-mindedly returned towards it. For the answer to it he would have to wait now till the spring ... and the spring would be a deuced long time in coming.