Mathilde, who sat to the right of the host, and by her saintly aspect seemed at times incongruous with that company of fashion’s fools, was for once silent, thoughtful, and demure.
“You have not told me yet if I may hope,” said the Pompadour to her in a tender undertone, “and we disperse in less than twenty minutes.”
“Hush!” she interrupted, with an impetuous jewelled hand upon his knee; “your friend has his eye on us! That man makes me afraid—he looks so cold, so supercilious! I hate to have a man regard me so who is convulsed with inside laughter, as you say; he looks—more like a conscience than a human secretary!”
Le Pompadour cast a glance across the room to the chair from which his secretary was at the moment summoned by a whispered message from the manager of the restaurant.
“He is a student of life and men,” said he. “It is his humour to put the follies of fashion underneath the microscope of a mind as searchingly analytical as a lens.”
“I’m glad all Scots are not like that,” said the lady fervently. “Now, you have the real French temperament, and the means to entertain it; your secretary, were he as rich as you, I’m sure would be a skinflint.”
“There, I can swear, you misjudge him,” said the Pompadour,—“a man born unhappy, and spoiled for any useful purpose, I am sorry for him.”
“Get rid of him—get rid of him!” said the lady, with a cleverly simulated shudder.
“What!” said the Pompadour, regarding her with surprise, seeing for the first time cruelty in the mild Madonna eyes. “Upon the secretary’s stipend there depend, you know, the comforts of a poor old Scottish lady—”
“There are so many openings for a perambulating conscience! Those canaille! I am sure his frigid countenance spoils your appetite; it would spoil mine—and you eat like a Trappist monk. Is that Scots too?”
“Gluttony is the one aristocratic vice to which I could never become accustomed,” he replied. “I was—I was once, as many here to-night would think, quite poor!”
She started slightly, looked incredulous. “How provoking it must have been!” she said.
“No,” he reflected soberly. “Happiness—to speak platitude—has wonderfully little to do with a bank account. You look so good and wise I thought you had discovered that.”