FullReads

“Come!” he insisted, with confidential familiarity. “He’s perhaps somewhere in the house now?”

She shook her head.

“So much the worse for him!” continued Lieut. D’Hubert, in a tone of anxious conviction. “But he has been home this morning.”

This time the pretty maid nodded slightly.

“He has!” cried Lieut. D’Hubert. “And went out again? What for? Couldn’t he keep quietly indoors! What a lunatic! My dear girl –“

Lieut. D’Hubert’s natural kindness of disposition and strong sense of comradeship helped his powers of observation. He changed his tone to a most insinuating softness, and, gazing at the hussar’s breeches hanging over the arm of the girl, he appealed to the interest she took in Lieut. Feraud’s comfort and happiness. He was pressing and persuasive. He used his eyes, which were kind and fine, with excellent effect. His anxiety to get hold at once of Lieut. Feraud, for Lieut. Feraud’s own good, seemed so genuine that at last it overcame the girl’s unwillingness to speak. Unluckily she had not much to tell. Lieut. Feraud had returned home shortly before ten, had walked straight into his room, and had thrown himself on his bed to resume his slumbers. She had heard him snore rather louder than before far into the afternoon. Then he got up, put on his best uniform, and went out. That was all she knew.

She raised her eyes, and Lieut. D’Hubert stared into them incredulously.

“It’s incredible. Gone parading the town in his best uniform! My dear child, don’t you know he ran that civilian through this morning? Clean through, as you spit a hare.”

The pretty maid heard the gruesome intelligence without any signs of distress. But she pressed her lips together thoughtfully.

“He isn’t parading the town,” she remarked in a low tone. “Far from it.”

“The civilian’s family is making an awful row,” continued Lieut. D’Hubert, pursuing his train of thought. “And the general is very angry. It’s one of the best families in the town. Feraud ought to have kept close at least –“

“What will the general do to him?” inquired the girl, anxiously.

“He won’t have his head cut off, to be sure,” grumbled Lieut. D’Hubert. “His conduct is positively indecent. He’s making no end of trouble for himself by this sort of bravado.”

“But he isn’t parading the town,” the maid insisted in a shy murmur.

“Why, yes! Now I think of it, I haven’t seen him anywhere about. What on earth has he done with himself?”

“He’s gone to pay a call,” suggested the maid, after a moment of silence.

Lieut. D’Hubert started.

“A call! Do you mean a call on a lady? The cheek of the man! And how do you know this, my dear?”

Without concealing her woman’s scorn for the denseness of the masculine mind, the pretty maid reminded him that Lieut. Feraud had arrayed himself in his best uniform before going out. He had also put on his newest dolman, she added, in a tone as if this conversation were getting on her nerves, and turned away brusquely.

Lieut. D’Hubert, without questioning the accuracy of the deduction, did not see that it advanced him much on his official quest. For his quest after Lieut. Feraud had an official character. He did not know any of the women this fellow, who had run a man through in the morning, was likely to visit in the afternoon. The two young men knew each other but slightly. He bit his gloved finger in perplexity.

“Call!” he exclaimed. “Call on the devil!”

The girl, with her back to him, and folding the hussars breeches on a chair, protested with a vexed little laugh:

“Oh, dear, no! On Madame de Lionne.”

Lieut. D’Hubert whistled softly. Madame de Lionne was the wife of a high official who had a well-known salon and some pretensions to sensibility and elegance. The husband was a civilian, and old; but the society of the salon was young and military. Lieut. D’Hubert had whistled, not because the idea of pursuing Lieut. Feraud into that very salon was disagreeable to him, but because, having arrived in Strasbourg only lately, he had not had the time as yet to get an introduction to Madame de Lionne. And what was that swashbuckler Feraud doing there, he wondered. He did not seem the sort of man who —