“Et d’autre part,” says Miss, with a naughty smile, “for some of us, a very bright one. You should have come to Les Saintes Maries de la Mer, where the sun shone all day in the sky and in our hearts.”
He drooped his head, protruded his lower lip, and regarded her from the top of his eyeballs. It was designed for an expression of despair, and was quite sweetly laughable.
“Les Saintes Maries!” he whispered hoarsely. “There is a stab, Mademoiselle, in your every word. I should have come? Ah, truly! But by what instinct, seeing I was kept uninformed of your intentions? But doubtless that was deliberate, and in order to keep me from interposing my shadow between the sun and your happiness. It is well; then. And yet it is possible my company might have proved not altogether profitless. It is a desert spot, which yet the Magician’s wand can make to flower. Truly, Mademoiselle, I think you did perversely in discarding your most attached cicerone.”
I laughed, and ran up the steps, leaving Fifine to make her peace as she chose with her injured follower.
CHAPTER XVI
Coming out after dinner to enjoy my smoke in the open, I found Fifine and her preux chevalier already ensconced on one of the two seats placed on the pavement against the house front. It was a still and balmy evening, and the rattling illuminated little Place was all one movement and babble of voices. I paused a moment to appreciate the scene, and then, as I descended the steps, somebody addressed me, a little doubtfully, from the second occupied seat:—
“Mr. Dane? It is Mr. Dane—isn’t it?”
“Présent!” I said, without a thought, and wheeled to look at the speaker. It was a young girl, indubitably English, who leaned forward to scrutinise me.
“Ah!” she said, turning merrily to a pleasant, placid-looking woman, who sat beside her—“he doesn’t know me, you see, Mother; I told you he wouldn’t.” And then she faced me again, a very white row of teeth witnessing to her nationality.
“Wait,” I said: “I am not such an insouciant as you think. You are Miss Clarice Brooking.”