Page:Hope-indiscretions of duchess.djvu/79

Rh “I know you are trying to annoy me, but you shan’t. Mr. Aycon, suppose my husband comes over to Avranches, and sees you?”

“I have thought of that.”

“Well, what have you decided?”

“Not to think about it till it happens. But won’t he be thinking more about you than me?”

“He won’t do anything about me,” she said. “In the first place, he will want no scandal. In the second, he does not want me. But he will come over to see her.”

“Her” was, of course, Marie Delhasse. The duchess assigned to her the sinister distinction of the simple pronoun.

“Surely he will take means to get you to go back?” I exclaimed.

“If he could have caught me before I got here, he would have been glad. Now he will wait; for if he came here and claimed me, what he proposed to do would become known.”

There seemed reason in this; the duchess calculated shrewdly.

“In fact,” said I, “I had better go back to the hotel.”

“That does not seem to vex you much.”

“Well, I can’t stay here, can I?” said I, looking round at the nunnery. “It would be irregular, you know.”

“You might go to another hotel,” suggested she.

“It is most important that I should watch what is going on at my present hotel,” said I gravely; for I did not wish to move.

“You are the most——” began the duchess.