These Old Shades (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 1)

‘You’re very vindictive!’

There was a moment’s silence; then Avon spoke.

‘I wonder if you have realised to the full my friend’s villainy. Consider for a moment, I beg of you. What mercy would you show to a man who could condemn his own daughter to the life my infant has led?’

Merivale straightened in his chair.

‘I know nothing of her life. It was bad?’

‘Yes, my dear, it was indeed bad. Until she was twelve years old she, a Saint-Vire, was reared as a peasant. After that she lived among the canaille of Paris. Conceive a tavern in a mean street, a bully for master, a shrew for mistress, and Vice, in all its lowest forms, under my infant’s very nose.’

‘It must have been – hell!’ Merivale said.

‘Just so,’ bowed his Grace. ‘It was the very worst kind of hell, as I know.’

‘The wonder is that she has come through it unscathed.’

The hazel eyes lifted.

‘Not quite unscathed, my dear Anthony. Those years have left their mark.’

‘It were inevitable, I suppose. But I confess I have not seen the mark.’

‘Possibly not. You see the roguery, and the dauntless spirit.’

‘And you?’ Merivale watched him curiously.

‘Oh, I see beneath, my dear! But then, I have had experience of the sex, as you know.’

‘And you see – what?’

‘A certain cynicism, born of the life she has led; a streak of strange wisdom; the wistfulness behind the gaiety; sometimes fear; and nearly always the memory of loneliness that hurts the soul.’

Merivale looked down at his snuff-box, and fell to tracing the pattern on it with one finger.

‘Do you know,’ he said slowly, ‘I think that you have grown, Alastair?’

His Grace rose.

‘Quite a reformed character, in fact,’ he said.

‘You can do no wrong in Léonie’s eyes.’

‘No, it is most amusing, is it not?’ Avon smiled, but there was bitterness in his smile, which Merivale saw.

Then they went back into the ballroom, and learned from Lady Fanny that Léonie had disappeared some time ago on Rupert’s arm, and had not since been seen.

She had indeed gone out with Rupert to a small salon where he brought her refreshment. Then had come towards them one Madame de Verchoureux, a handsome termagant who had been all things to Avon when Léonie had first come to him. She looked at Léonie with hatred in her eyes, and paused for a moment beside her couch.

Rupert came to his feet, and bowed. Madame swept a curtsy.

‘It is – Mademoiselle de Bonnard?’ she said.

‘Yes, madame.’ Léonie got up, and curtsied also. ‘I am very stupid, but I cannot at once recall madame’s name.’

Rupert, supposing the lady to be one of Fanny’s friends, lounged back into the ballroom; Léonie was left looking up at Avon’s slighted mistress.

‘I felicitate you, mademoiselle,’ said the lady sarcastically. ‘You are more fortunate than I was, it seems.’