perversity lighted by such a conclusion, and there were times when
Longmore was almost persuaded against his finer judgement that he was
really the most considerate of husbands and that it was not a man's
fault if his wife's love of life had pitched itself once for all in
the minor key. The Count's manners were perfect, his discretion
irreproachable, and he seemed never to address his companion but,
sentimentally speaking, hat in hand. His tone to Longmore--as the latter
was perfectly aware--was that of a man of the world to a man not quite
of the world; but what it lacked in true frankness it made up in easy
form. "I can't thank you enough for having overcome my wife's shyness,"
he more than once declared. "If we left her to do as she pleased she
would--in her youth and her beauty--bury herself all absurdly alive.
Come often, and bring your good friends and compatriots--some of them
are so amusing. She'll have nothing to do with mine, but perhaps you'll
be able to offer her better son affaire."
M. de Mauves made these speeches with a bright assurance very amazing to
our hero, who had an innocent belief that a man's head may point out
to him the shortcomings of his heart and make him ashamed of them.
He couldn't fancy him formed both to neglect his wife and to take the
derisive view of her minding it. Longmore had at any rate an exasperated
sense that this nobleman thought rather the less of their interesting
friend on account of that very same fine difference of nature which
so deeply stirred his own sympathies. He was rarely present during the
sessions of the American visitor, and he made a daily journey to Paris,
where he had de gros soucis d'affaires as he once mentioned--with an
all-embracing flourish and not in the least in the tone of apology. When
he appeared it was late in the evening and with an imperturbable air
of being on the best of terms with every one and every thing which was
peculiarly annoying if you happened to have a tacit quarrel with him.
If he was an honest man he was an honest man somehow spoiled for
confidence. Something he had, however, that his critic vaguely envied,
something in his address, splendidly positive, a manner rounded
and polished by the habit of conversation and the friction of full
experience, an urbanity exercised for his own sake, not for his
neighbour's, which seemed the fruit of one of those strong temperaments
that rule the inward scene better than the best conscience. The
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