“Ah, yes, my friend,” said Sir Andrew, addressing Brogard, with the same assumption of carelessness, “my lord always wears beautiful clothes; the tall Englishman you saw, was certainly my lady’s friend. And he has gone, you say?”
“He went . . . yes . . . but he’s coming back . . . here—he ordered supper . . .”
Sir Andrew put his hand with a quick gesture of warning upon Marguerite’s arm; it came none too soon, for the next moment her wild, mad joy would have betrayed her. He was safe and well, was coming back here presently, she would see him in a few moments perhaps. . . . Oh! the wildness of her joy seemed almost more than she could bear.
“Here!” she said to Brogard, who seemed suddenly to have been transformed in her eyes into some heaven-born messenger of bliss. “Here!—did you say the English gentleman was coming back here?”
The heaven-born messenger of bliss spat upon the floor, to express his contempt for all and sundry aristos, who chose to haunt the “Chat Gris.”
“Heu!” he muttered, “he ordered supper—he will come back. . . . Sacrré Anglais!” he added, by way of protest against all this fuss for a mere Englishman.
“But where is he now?—Do you know?” she asked eagerly, placing her dainty white hand upon the dirty sleeve of his blue blouse.
“He went to get a horse and cart,” said Brogard, laconically, as, with a surly gesture, he shook off from his arm that pretty hand which princes had been proud to kiss.
“At what time did he go?”
But Brogard had evidently had enough of these questionings. He did not think that it was fitting for a citizen—who was the equal of anybody—to be thus catechised by these sacrrés aristos, even though they were rich English ones. It was distinctly more fitting to his new-born dignity to be as rude as possible; it was a sure sign of servility to meekly reply to civil questions.