“You did,” I asserted, raising my voice. “It almost killed you!”
“Monsieur,” he begged hoarsely, “HUSH!”
“What is the matter?” I demanded loudly. “What do you mean by these abominable croakings? Speak out!”
“Monsieur—” he gesticulated in a panic, toward the courtyard. “Mademoiselle Ward is out there.”
“WHAT!” But I did not shout the word.
“There is always a little window in the rear wall,” he breathed in my ear as I dropped into the chair by the table. “She would not see you if—”
I interrupted with all the French rough-and-ready expressions of dislike at my command, daring to hope that they might give him some shadowy, far-away idea of what I thought of both himself and his suggestions, and, notwithstanding the difficulty of expressing strong feeling in whispers, it seemed to me that, in a measure, I succeeded. “I am not in the habit of crawling out of ventilators,” I added, subduing a tendency to vehemence. “And probably Mademoiselle Ward has only come to talk with Madame Brossard.”
“I fear some of those people may have told her you were here,” he ventured insinuatingly.
“What people?” I asked, drinking my coffee calmly, yet, it must be confessed, without quite the deliberation I could have wished.
“Those who stopped yesterday evening on the way to the chateau. They might have recognised—”