Page:Hope-indiscretions of duchess.djvu/134

122 Am I a boy—do I know nothing of women? And do I know nothing of men?”

And he ended in a miserable laugh, and then fell again to tugging his mustache with his shaking hand.

“You know,” said I, “what’s bad in both; and no doubt that’s a good deal.”

In that very room the duchess had called Gustave de Berensac a preacher. Her husband had much the same reproach for me.

“Sermons are fine from your mouth,” he muttered.

And then his self-control gave way. With a sweep of his arm he drove the necklace from him, so that the box whizzed across the table, balanced a moment on the edge, and fell crashing on the ground, while the duke cried:

“God’s curse on it and you! You’ve taken her from me!”

There was danger—there was something like madness—in his aspect as he rose, and, facing me where I sat, went on in tones still low, but charged with a rage that twisted his features and lined his white cheeks:

“Are you a liar or a fool? Have you taken the game for yourself, or are you fool enough not to see that she has despised me—and that miserable necklace—for you—because you’ve caught her fancy? My God! and I’ve given my life to it for two years past! And you step in. Why didn’t you keep to my wife? You were welcome to her—though I’d have shot you all the same for my name’s sake. You must have Marie too, must you?”