"Oh, drawin"-lessons?" said Mr. Percy tolerantly. "Well, don" lemme interrup" ye."
He moved as if to withdraw toward the steps, but she detained him with a question. "You"re spending the rest of the summer here?"
"That depends," he answered tersely.
"I hear you have some Pa.s.sIONATELY interesting friends."
"Where did you hear that?"
"Ah, don"t you know?" she responded commiseratingly. "This is the most scandalously gossipy neighbourhood in France. My DEAR young man, every one from here to Timbuctu knows all about it by this time!"
"All about what?"
"About the excitement you"re such a VALUABLE part of; about your wonderful Spanish friend and how she claims the strange young man here for her husband."
"They"ll know more"n that, I expec"," he returned with a side glance at me, "before VERY long."
"Every one thinks _I_ am so interesting," she rattled on artlessly, "because I happened to meet YOU in the woods. I"ve held quite a levee all day. In a reflected way it makes a heroine of me, you see, because you are one of the very MOST prominent figures in it all. I hope you won"t think I"ve been too bold," she pursued anxiously, "in claiming that I really am one of your acquaintances?"
"That"ll be all right," he politely a.s.sured her.
"I am so glad." Her laughter rang out gaily. "Because I"ve been talking about you as if we were the OLDEST friends, and I"d hate to have them find me out. I"ve told them everything--about your appearance you see, and how your hair was parted, and how you were dressed, and--"
"Luk here," he interrupted, suddenly discharging his Bowery laugh, "did you tell "em how HE was dressed?" He pointed a jocular finger at me.
"That WUD "a" made a hit!"
"No; we weren"t talking of him."
"Why not? He"s in it, too. Bullieve me, he THINKS he is!"
"In the excitement, you mean?"
"Right!" said Mr. Percy amiably. "He goes round holdin" Rip Van Winkle Keredec"s hand when the ole man"s cryin"; helpin" him sneak his trunks off t" Paris--playin" the hired man gener"ly. Oh, he thinks he"s quite the boy, in this trouble!"
"I"m afraid it"s a small part," she returned, "compared to yours."
"Oh, I hold my end up, I guess."
"I should think you"d be so worn out and sleepy you couldn"t hold your head up!"
"Who? ME? Not t"-night, m"little friend. I tuk MY sleep"s aft"noon and let Rameau do the Sherlock a little while."
She gazed upon him with unconcealed admiration. "You are wonderful,"
she sighed faintly, and "WONDERFUL!" she breathed again. "How prosaic are drawing-lessons," she continued, touching my arm and moving with me toward the pavilion, "after listening to a man of action like that!"
Mr. Percy, establishing himself comfortably in a garden chair at the foot of the gallery steps, was heard to utter a short cough as he renewed the light of his cigarette.
My visitor paused upon my veranda, humming, "Quand l"Amour Meurt" while I went within and lit a lamp. "Shall I bring the light out there?" I asked, but, turning, found that she was already in the room.
"The sketch-book is my duenna," she said, sinking into a chair upon one side of the centre table, upon which I placed the lamp. "Lessons are unquestionable, at any place or time. Behold the beautiful posies!" She spread the book open on the table between us, as I seated myself opposite her, revealing some antique coloured smudges of flowers.
"Elegancies of Eighteen-Forty! Isn"t that a survival of the period when young ladies had "accomplishments," though! I found it at the chateau and--"
"Never mind," I said. "Don"t you know that you can"t ramble over the country alone at this time of night?"
"If you speak any louder," she said, with some urgency of manner, "you"ll be "hopelessly compromised socially," as Mrs. Alderman McGinnis and the d.u.c.h.ess of Gwythyl-Corners say"--she directed my glance, by one of her own, through the open door to Mr. Percy--"because HE"LL hear you and know that the sketch-book was only a shallow pretext of mine to see you. Do be a little manfully self-contained, or you"ll get us talked about! And as for "this time of night," I believe it"s almost half past nine."
"Does Miss Ward know--"
"Do you think it likely? One of the most convenient things about a chateau is the number of ways to get out of it without being seen. I had a choice of eight. So I "suffered fearfully from neuralgia," dined in my own room, and sped through the woods to my honest forester." She nodded brightly. "That"s YOU!"
"You weren"t afraid to come through the woods alone?" I asked, uncomfortably conscious that her gaiety met a dull response from me.
"No."
"But if Miss Ward finds that you"re not at the chateau--"
"She won"t; she thinks I"m asleep. She brought me up a sleeping-powder herself."
"She thinks you took it?"
"She KNOWS I did," said Miss Elliott. "I"m full of it! And that will be the reason--if you notice that I"m particularly nervous or excited."
"You seem all of that," I said, looking at her eyes, which were very wide and very brilliant. "However, I believe you always do."
"Ah!" she smiled. "I knew you thought me atrocious from the first. You find MYRIADS of objections to me, don"t you?"
I had forgotten to look away from her eyes, and I kept on forgetting.
(The same thing had happened several times lately; and each time, by a somewhat painful coincidence, I remembered my age at precisely the instant I remembered to look away.) "Dazzling" is a good old-fashioned word for eyes like hers; at least it might define their effect on me.
"If I did manage to object to you," I said slowly, "it would be a good thing for me--wouldn"t it?"
"Oh, I"ve WON!" she cried.
"Won?" I echoed.
"Yes. I laid a wager with myself that I"d have a pretty speech from you before I went out of your life"--she checked a laugh, and concluded thrillingly--"forever! I leave Quesnay to-morrow!"
"Your father has returned from America?"
"Oh dear, no," she murmured. "I"ll be quite at the world"s mercy. I must go up to Paris and retire from public life until he does come. I shall take the vows--in some obscure but respectable pension."
"You can"t endure the life at the chateau any longer?"
"It won"t endure ME any longer. If I shouldn"t go to-morrow I"d be put out, I think--after to-night!"
"But you intimated that no one would know about to-night!"
"The night isn"t over yet," she replied enigmatically.