Читать книгу The Temptress (La tierra de todos) онлайн

34 страница из 108

As he left the Torre Bianca’s one evening, Robledo started off down the Avenue Henri Martin towards the Trocadero, where he expected to take the subway. One of the guests accompanied him, a dubious looking person, who sat at the last seat at table, and now seemed quite happy to be walking along with a South American millionaire. He was a protégé of Fontenoy’s and edited a business weekly, one of the banker’s innumerable enterprises. A close and acid person, he seemed to expand only in those moments when he was criticising his benefactors, which was always the moment their backs were turned. At the end of a few yards he began to pay off his debt toward his host and hostess by gossiping about them. He knew of course that Robledo was a school friend of the Marquis.

“And have you known his wife a long time too?” he inquired, and smiled meaningly when Robledo admitted that he had first made her acquaintance a few weeks ago.

“Russian! Do you really think that she is Russian?... Of course that’s what she says she is, just as she says her first husband was a Marshall of the Czar’s court.... Yet a good many people can’t help wondering whether there ever was such a husband. I don’t care to say anything about the truth of all this. But I do know that I never have met any Russians at the noble lady’s house.”