One thought only pervaded the place, from the topmost attics inhabited by Marie the Bretonne and the other femmes-de-chambre, down through the other floors to the wide salons and to the shut-off wing that was the domain of the management. One topic alone set all tongues there chattering, in English, French, or Canadian-Scots. One piece of news was now being discussed before any communiqué from any of the fronts.
It was the news about Miss Agatha Walsh and the nephew of "the management," Sergeant Tronchet.
They were engaged to be married.
This was sudden, as everybody commented one after another. This was quick work. For, how long had Miss Walsh been staying at the hotel? Two—three days? And had she ever met this man before? Never?
One moonlight walk in the pine-forest, one expedition by motor-boat across the lagoon, half a dozen conversations at table d'hôte, an encounter at the post office where Miss Walsh had gone to buy picture postcards of the Côte d'Azur, another stroll in the forest, a game of draughts together—this had been all the preparation necessary for a declaration from the bull-necked, swarthy French sergeant to the English lady-all-alone. The deed was done. He had asked her to become his wife. She had accepted him. No; there was no mistake. The pair were going about looking as if they were newly-elected king and queen of the Gironde, and those visitors to whom the engagement had not been announced in French by Sergeant Tronchet, had been told in English by the radiant, tremulous, blissful Miss Walsh herself.
Madame Leroux, all smiles, had confirmed the news herself in each instance. Monsieur Leroux had taken the little tramway into Arcachon to blaze it abroad at his café. The three little pigtailed daughters fluttered about the villas of Les Pins in their red-and-white check frocks, twittering like starlings on the subject of the fiançailles, and spreading the news that Mademoiselle Ouallshe was sending to Paris for presents for each of them, and had said that they were to call her Tante Agathe! The wedding was for soon—for almost immediately!
Excitement rose higher and higher; it might be observed that the delight seemed, if anything, on the French side; the astonishment on that of the English visitors.
Little Mr. Brown turned from his plans for furnishing the woodcutter's hut for himself to open his candid and bulging blue eyes upon this new event in the hotel. He was, as a matter of fact, the first of those who heard the news to refer to a certain element in it.
"I say; look here," was his comment. "That chap's all right, I daresay; but are his people and all that quite class enough for the lady's family? I don't know about foreigners, of course. And of course I don't pretend to be Anybody, myself. But what'll her people at home think? Won't they——Well, socially, I should have thought it would have been considered a bit Rum!"
Mrs. Cartwright told him, quickly and quietly, that this marriage was not complicated, on "the lady's" side, by any people at home, and turned to Olwen to confirm it. Olwen, who was wide-eyed with a mixture of feelings, which she was surprised to find were not all happy ones, agreed that Miss Walsh hadn't any relations.