“Hold! it strikes me it is the Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan. What the deuce is he doing there?”
“Better go and see. Champagne, drive up to the upset carriage.”
The countess’s coachman quitted the road and drove to the grove. The cardinal was a handsome gentleman of thirty years of age, of gracious manners and elegant. He was waiting for help to come, with the utmost unconcern.
“A thousand respects to your ladyship,” he said. “My brute of a coachman whom I hired from England, for my punishment, has spilled me in taking a short cut through the woods to join the hunt, and smashed my best carriage.”
“Think yourself lucky—a French Jehu would have smashed the passenger! be comforted.”
“Oh, I am philosophic, countess; but it is death to have to wait.”
“Who ever heard of a Rohan waiting?”
“The present representative of the family is compelled to do it; but Prince Soubise will happen along soon to give me a lift.”
“Suppose he goes another way?
“You must step into my carriage; if you were to refuse, I should give it up to you, and with a footman to carry my train, walk in the woods like a tree nymph.”