“Is that you, Manilof?..” said a clear voice from the darkness, the voice of a woman. “Help me... I have lost my shoe.”
He recognized at once the foreign warble of his pretty little neighbour at the dinner-table, whose delicate silhouette he now saw in the first pale gleam of the coming sun.
“It is not Manilof, mademoiselle, but if I can be useful to you...”
She gave a little cry of surprise and alarm as she made a recoiling gesture that Tartarin did not perceive, having already stooped to feel about the short and crackling grass around them.
“Té, pardi! here it is!” he cried joyfully. He shook the dainty shoe which the snow had powdered, and putting a knee to earth, most gallantly in the snow and the dampness, he asked, for all reward, the honour of replacing it on Cinderella’s foot.
She, more repellent than in the tale, replied with a very curt “no;” and endeavoured, by hopping on one foot, to reinstate her silk stocking in its little bronze shoe; but in that she could never have succeeded without the help of the hero, who was greatly moved by feeling for an instant that delicate hand upon his shoulder.
“You have good eyes,” she said, by way of thanks as they now walked side by side, and feeling their way.
“The habit of watching for game, mademoiselle.”
“Ah! you are a sportsman?”
She said it with an incredulous, satirical, accent Tartarin had only to name himself in order to convince her, but, like the bearers of all illustrious names, he preferred discretion, coquetry. So, wishing to graduate the surprise, he answered:—