However that be, I led Kondjé-Gul back to my aunt's side, and she did
not dance any more.
From a corner of the drawing-room I saw some half-a-dozen of my friends
march up to get introduced to her, anxiously longing to obtain the same
favour as I had, and I laughed at their discomfiture.
Meanwhile the commodore, who, by the way, is a highly educated and
thoroughly good-natured man, had marked me out, and was so kind in his
attentions to me, that I felt constrained, in spite of my scruples, to
accept his advances. His relations with my uncle, moreover, might have
made the cold reserve which I had so far maintained appear singular.
Finally, towards the middle of the entertainment, when he was going away
with his daughters and Kondjé-Gul, whom he had to see home to Madame
Montier's, I had, without meaning it, so completely won his good
opinion, that I found myself invited to accompany my aunt who was dining
with him the next day but one.
Although it was only a fatality that had led to this extraordinary
complication, I must own that, when I began to think over it and to
contemplate the possible consequences, I felt a considerable anxiety.
Hitherto, by a compromise with conscience, which Kondjé-Gul's childlike
simplicity rendered almost excusable, I had been enabled to deceive
myself about the consequences of this school-friendship with two
American girls who were strangers to me. This, I thought, would never be
more than a chance companionship, and when her time with them was over,
the Misses Maud and Suzannah would remain ignorant of her real position,
which they had no occasion for suspecting. But I could not fail to
perceive that our relations with the commodore must aggravate our
difficulties to a remarkable extent.
Our society affords shelter, certainly, to many a hidden romance: we
have both honest loves and shady intrigues confused and interlaced in
its mazes so that they escape all notice. Yet, certain as I felt that
nothing could occur to betray our extraordinary secret, I was troubled
all the same at the part which I should have to play in this family with
which my uncle was on such intimate terms.
Placed face to face with the inexorable logic of facts, I could not long
deceive myself as to the course which the most elementary sense of
delicacy prescribed to me. I could see clearly during this last evening
party, that Kondjé-Gul had no further need of Madame Montier's lessons
to complete her social education. Count Térals house being now ready to
receive her, I need only settle her there with her mother in order to
commence at once the happy life of which we had so often dreamed. Then
it would be easy to withdraw gradually from the society of the Montague
girls, and thus banish all future risks.