"
"View of Mont Blanc?" Nellie stammered.
Everybody was aware that she and Denry had never been in Switzerland
before, and that their marriage was indeed less than a month old.
"You misunderstood me," said Denry, gruffly. "My wife hasn't been to
Geneva."
"Oh!" drawled Captain Deverax.
His "Oh!" contained so much of insinuation, disdain, and lofty amusement
that Denry blushed, and when Nellie saw her husband's cheek she blushed
in competition and defeated him easily. It was felt that either Denry
had been romancing to the Captain, or that he had been married before,
unknown to his Nellie, and had been "carrying on" at Geneva. The
situation, though it dissolved of itself in a brief space, was awkward.
It discredited the Hotel Beau-Site. It was in the nature of a repulse
for the Hotel Beau-Site (franc a day cheaper than the Metropole) and of
a triumph for the popinjay. The fault was utterly Denry's. Yet he said
to himself:
"I'll be even with that chap."
On the drive home he was silent. The theme of conversation in the
sleighs which did not contain the Countess was that the Captain had
flirted tremendously with the Countess, and that it amounted to an
affair.
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