“Well, to take an example,” said Sir Francis, with a little smile which he perhaps intended to be deprecating, “we all realize that you have a pleasing voice, but it is possible, you know, to have too much of a good thing.”
Raoul coloured. “You mean that I talk too much?”
“I should not venture to express an opinion on that point,” returned “le Roi Soleil” with an air of diplomacy. “I was referring rather to your vocal gifts, in the exercise of which—forgive me!—you are certainly not sparing. Two songs in the space of half an hour—and neither of them, if I may say so, in the best of taste, all things considered.”
“Monsieur, I think you are impertinent!” said Raoul, sharply.
Sir Francis shrugged his shoulders. “I warned you that my errand was unpleasant.”
“Errand!” Raoul took him up. “Who sent you on that errand? Not Mr. Bentley, I am sure.”
“No, I have no commission from Mr. Bentley, though I think that, for your own sake, he would approve of what I am saying. For my only desire (if you would but believe it) is to present you, out of good-will, with a hint.”
“I do not take hints from you, Sir, whatever prompts them!” said Raoul, drawing himself up. But Sir Francis from his superior height looked across the embrasure at him with an olympian air which was hard to stomach.
“That is a pity, Monsieur des Sablières, because it would really be better, again for your own sake, that you should reflect whether your very frequent presence at Northover is not putting too great a strain even on Mr. Bentley’s hospitality.”
Naturally sweet-tempered as he was, Raoul began to feel that this was too much. “The day that Mr. Bentley himself——” he began warmly, but Sir Francis bore him down.
“Mr. Bentley, as you well know, is too kind-hearted ever to suggest such a thing. Let me put another consideration before you, then. Do you suppose that it is a source of satisfaction to the gentlemen of this neighbourhood to find a person of your nationality present at almost every gathering, and usually in a position of prominence which his own better feelings should have led him to avoid?”
Now this indictment, wounding as it was, might, for all the young Frenchman knew, have some truth behind it, though he had never observed the slightest signs of ill-will towards him among the local gentry, with many of whom he was on excellent terms. And he had always been most careful not to push himself forward. Still, if there were one or two who disliked him . . . But while he stood silent, honestly trying to face such a possibility, Sir Francis saw fit to follow up his advantage by adding, in the most openly insolent manner: “You are only here at all, you know, on sufferance!”
Raoul could not suppress a little gasp. “Thank you for the so courteous reminder!” he said. Then he gripped the edge of the card table in the window and became dangerously quiet. “You will tell me, please, whether in doing me this kind office you are speaking for yourself alone, or whether you have been deputed by others to insult me?”
“And I also should like to be informed on that point,” said a level voice behind them, and both, turning round in surprise, beheld the Comte de Sainte-Suzanne on the threshold of the library. “I take it, Sir Francis,” he continued, coming forward a little, “that the recommendation you have just so tactfully made to Monsieur des Sablières applies to me also, a Frenchman, an exile and an habitué of Northover. I am only sorry that my reliance on Mr. Bentley’s ever-ready welcome has led me, like my young fellow-countryman here, to offend Mr. Bentley’s other guests. You may be sure that I shall make him and them the profoundest apologies.”
If the young fellow-countryman had been in a laughing mood he might have enjoyed the stupefaction and then the patent alarm of his aggressor. “Monsieur le Comte,” stammered “le Roi Soleil,” leaving the window, “I beg of you . . . my remarks were of course not meant . . . I was not aware . . .”
“Then if you do not wish Mr. Bentley to know how unjustifiably you have been trying to dictate to one of his guests in his house,” said the old man sternly, “I suggest that you immediately apologise to Monsieur des Sablières for your last very gross observation.”
“No, no, a forced apology is of no use to me, Monsieur de Sainte-Suzanne!” cried Raoul quickly. “And, for my part, I would point out to this gentleman that since he so much dislikes my visits here, the remedy is simple—he can cease his own.”
“You impudent——” began Sir Francis, taking a step towards him; but the old man broke in sharply:
“Monsieur des Sablières, look at the clock there! You have but just time to take leave of the company and to reach your lodgings before curfew. That obligation takes precedence of everything else at this moment.”
Raoul’s eyes had instinctively followed his pointing finger, and he saw indeed that the tall clock in the corner marked twenty minutes to seven, and by seven he must be back under the roof of Miss Eliza Hitchings in the little town.
“Thank you, Monsieur,” he said to the old Royalist with a mixture of real gratitude and of regret at having to quit the field of battle. “And thank you still more,” he added in his own tongue, “for your generosity just now in classing yourself with me; I shall not forget it.” He bowed to him, looked at Sir Francis in no pacific fashion, and remarking “We must finish this conversation, Sir, another time,” left the room.
He was excessively angry, but it was imperative to bottle down his wrath for the moment, since he must return to the drawing room and make his farewells without an instant’s delay. As he hurried towards that apartment he rejected the idea of slipping out of the house without taking leave, not only because it would be discourteous, but also because Sir Francis, if he heard of it, might draw very incorrect conclusions as to the effect of his admonitions. No; good manners at any cost, even if he all but burst with the constraint he was putting upon himself as he opened the drawing-room door.
Afterwards he was to think how differently things might have gone if he had not made that sacrifice to politeness and pride.
His re-entry into the lighted drawing room was hailed with questions as to where he had been and reproaches for his absence. Smiling, shaking his head, and reminding his critics that a good prisoner had to be home by seven o’clock this month, and that he should have to run most of the mile to the town as it was, he made his way to Miss Bentley and apologized for his hasty leave-taking.
“All right, my boy,” said Mr. Bentley, coming up from behind and clapping him upon the shoulder. “Letty quite understands. Off with you—but be sure you come extra early on Tuesday to make up, that’s all.”
“Yes, you have not forgotten Tuesday, I hope, Monsieur des Sablières?” enquired Laetitia anxiously. “The concert, you know.”
No, it did not seem as if the Bentleys, at all events, felt that he trespassed too often upon their hospitality.
Nor that Miss Forrest, the most beautiful girl in the room, resented his presence there, alien though he was. (“The sun, whose beams most glorious are, rejecteth no beholder.”) For as, his farewells over, he made for the drawing-room door, she chanced to be standing near it, alone—or at any rate she was near it, alone.
“I must bid you a long, a month’s, farewell, Mademoiselle,” said the young man, with lightly feigned solemnity. But the words of the song wove themselves unuttered about his own as he looked at her, though he hoped that that “sweet beauty past compare” did not cause his gaze to be too bold. “Do not, I pray you, forget your kind promise to send me the romance of Doctor Johnson to make that month seem less long.”
To this, looking him in the face, Miss Juliana replied calmly: “I have been reflecting about Rasselas, Monsieur des Sablières. To-morrow afternoon I intend to come to Northover again, to take farewell of Miss Bentley. I will put the book in my pocket, just in case I should be walking back, and should come across you—should you, for instance, by any chance be fishing near Fawley Bridge, where I think