"God forgive me," he said, "for a thoughtless dolt. I was forgetting the flight of time. Now, Mademoiselle Fernande, if you will trust yourself to me...."
"Do you really mean," she queried, "that you will carry me all the way to Courson?"
"If you will let me."
She threw him a mute glance of gratitude, which somehow seemed to addle his brain in a manner which he thought strangely unaccountable, but not altogether unpleasant.
"Oh, my flowers!" she suddenly exclaimed ruefully. "I had taken such trouble to pick them!"
The sheaf of wild hyacinth was lying in a disordered mass of blue at her feet.
"Mon cousin, I pray you pick them up for me!" she added with a pretty tone of appeal.
At once he was down on his knees; it seemed practically impossible that he should disobey the slightest of her commands, and, mechanically, he gathered together the bunch of bluebells and handed it up to her. He was strangely awkward in the accomplishment of this task, and when he looked up to her again, a mischievous light was dancing in her eyes.
"You think me a clumsy oaf, I'll warrant," he said, while that ghost of a smile which became him so well lit up his face in response. "'Tis the first time in my life I've waited on a lady, and...."