XXVIII
AT THE SIGN OF THE CYGNET
A COSMOPOLITAN ROMANCE
I
It was late spring in New England. Buttercups bespangled the grass and nodded and smiled at the apple-blossoms in the trees. And the apple-blossoms nodded in return, and in a few days fluttered down to the buttercups.
On the front stoop of an old baronial castle in the south of France stood Armand Maria Sylvestre de Faience Pomade Pommedeterre. He had been standing there all the morning, he knew not why. True, he looked well, but he would have looked as well anywhere else, and he might have been doing something. Still, there is time. It is but the first chapter.
Godiva Churchill Churchill, of Churchill Wolde, Biddecumb on Baddecumb, the only daughter of her widowed mother and widowered father, cantered slowly down the roadway that led to Churchill Hall, the home of the Churchills for seven centuries. Her right cheek was overflushed, and ever and anon she bit her chin. England could boast of no prettier girl than Godiva, nor did England boast of it as much as Godiva did.