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“Ah! mademoiselle,” he said, in a tone of courtly regret, “if only I could be certain that you did not come here this morning, two miles, running all the way, merely from affection for your mother!”

He waited for an answer imperturbable but inwardly elated. It came in a demure murmur, eyelashes lowered with fascinating effect. “You must not be mechant as well as mad.”

And then General D’Hubert made an aggressive movement towards the divan which nothing could check. That piece of furniture was not exactly in the line of the open door. But Madame Leonie, coming back wrapped up in a light cloak and carrying a lace shawl on her arm for Adele to hide her incriminating hair under, had a swift impression of her brother getting up from his knees.

“Come along, my dear child,” she cried from the doorway.

The general, now himself again in the fullest sense, showed the readiness of a resourceful cavalry officer and the peremptoriness of a leader of men. “You don’t expect her to walk to the carriage,” he said, indignantly. “She isn’t fit. I shall carry her downstairs.”

This he did slowly, followed by his awed and respectful sister; but he rushed back like a whirlwind to wash off all the signs of the night of anguish and the morning of war, and to put on the festive garments of a conqueror before hurrying over to the other house. Had it not been for that, General D ‘Hubert felt capable of mounting a horse and pursuing his late adversary in order simply to embrace him from excess of happiness. “I owe it all to this stupid brute,” he thought. “He has made plain in a morning what might have taken me years to find out — for I am a timid fool. No self-confidence whatever. Perfect coward. And the Chevalier! Delightful old man!” General D’Hubert longed to embrace him also.

The Chevalier was in bed. For several days he was very unwell. The men of the Empire and the post-revolution young ladies were too much for him. He got up the day before the wedding, and, being curious by nature, took his niece aside for a quiet talk. He advised her to find out from her husband the true story of the affair of honour, whose claim, so imperative and so persistent, had led her to within an ace of tragedy. “It is right that his wife should be told. And next month or so will be your time to learn from him anything you want to know, my dear child.”

Later on, when the married couple came on a visit to the mother of the bride, Madame la Generale D’Hubert communicated to her beloved old uncle the true story she had obtained without any difficulty from her husband.

The Chevalier listened with deep attention to the end, took a pinch of snuff, flicked the grains of tobacco from the frilled front of his shirt, and asked, calmly, “And that’s all it was?”

“Yes, uncle,” replied Madame la Generale, opening her pretty eyes very wide. “Isn’t it funny? C’est insense — to think what men are capable of!”

“H’m!” commented the old emigre. “It depends what sort of men. That Bonaparte’s soldiers were savages. It is insense. As a wife, my dear, you must believe implicitly what your husband says.”

But to Leonie’s husband the Chevalier confided his true opinion. “If that’s the tale the fellow made up for his wife, and during the honeymoon, too, you may depend on it that no one will ever know now the secret of this affair.”

Considerably later still, General D’Hubert judged the time come, and the opportunity propitious to write a letter to General Feraud. This letter began by disclaiming all animosity. “I’ve never,” wrote the General Baron D’Hubert, “wished for your death during all the time of our deplorable quarrel. Allow me,” he continued, “to give you back in all form your forfeited life. It is proper that we two, who have been partners in so much military glory, should be friendly to each other publicly.”

The same letter contained also an item of domestic information. It was in reference to this last that General Feraud answered from a little village on the banks of the Garonne, in the following words:

“If one of your boy’s names had been Napoleon — or Joseph — or even Joachim, I could congratulate you on the event with a better heart. As you have thought proper to give him the names of Charles Henri Armand, I am confirmed in my conviction that you never loved the Emperor. The thought of that sublime hero chained to a rock in the middle of a savage ocean makes life of so little value that I would receive with positive joy your instructions to blow my brains out. From suicide I consider myself in honour debarred. But I keep a loaded pistol in my drawer.”

Madame la Generale D’Hubert lifted up her hands in despair after perusing that answer.

“You see? He won’t be reconciled,” said her husband. “He must never, by any chance, be allowed to guess where the money comes from. It wouldn’t do. He couldn’t bear it.”

“You are a brave homme, Armand,”said Madame la Generale, appreciatively.

“My dear, I had the right to blow his brains out; but as I didn’t, we can’t let him starve. He has lost his pension and he is utterly incapable of doing anything in the world for himself. We must take care of him, secretly, to the end of his days. Don’t I owe him the most ecstatic moment of my life? . . . Ha! ha! ha! Over the fields, two miles, running all the way! I couldn’t believe my ears! . . . But for his stupid ferocity, it would have taken me years to find you out. It’s extraordinary how in one way or another this man has managed to fasten himself on my deeper feelings.”