"What!" he exclaimed, with a smile, "can young ladies read the
thoughts of love behind the silent brow?"
"Your brother is in love, then?" she asked, betrayed into a movement
of curiosity.
"Yes; my sister Clara, to whom he is as devoted as a mother, wrote to
me that he had fallen in love this summer with a very pretty girl; but
I have had no further news of the affair. Would you believe that the
poor boy used to get up at five in the morning, and went off to settle
his business that he might be back by four o'clock in the country
where the lady was? In fact, he ruined a very nice thoroughbred that I
had just given him. Forgive my chatter, mademoiselle; I have but just
come home from Germany. For a year I have heard no decent French, I
have been weaned from French faces, and satiated with Germans, to such
a degree that, I believe, in my patriotic mania, I could talk to the
chimeras on a French candlestick. And if I talk with a lack of reserve
unbecoming in a diplomatist, the fault is yours, mademoiselle. Was it
not you who pointed out my brother? When he is the theme I become
inexhaustible. I should like to proclaim to all the world how good and
generous he is. He gave up no less than a hundred thousand francs a
year, the income from the Longueville property."
If Mademoiselle de Fontaine had the benefit of these important
revelations, it was partly due to the skill with which she continued
to question her confiding partner from the moment when she found that
he was the brother of her scorned lover.
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