“I am afraid, Ma Mie,” said he, with a tone of half reproach, “that your letter there has usurped all your interest, and my eloquence as Cicerone gone quite for nothing.”
“No, Gardy, I heard you with much pleasure. What did you say that rock was called?”
“That rock, Mademoiselle,” said he, dryly, “is a wreck, and I was vain enough to have believed that my narrative of the incident had moved you.”
“I am so weak, Gardy, so very weak,” said she, plaintively, as she laid her hand on the back of his, “that I follow anything with difficulty.”
“My sweet child, how cruel of me to forget it. Are we lingering too long on these sands?”
“Oh no; let us stay here some time longer. I want to see the sun go down, it is so long since I saw a sunset.”
He drew her shawl around her carefully, and sheltered her with his umbrella against the scarcely breathing wind.
“How kind you are, how good,” said she, softly; and then, with a playful lightness, added, “how courtier-like, too.”
“Why courtier-like, Ma Mie?” said he.
“Is it not like a courtier,” said she, “to treat a peasant-girl as if she were a princess? You would not even ask me when I saw my last sunset, lest I should have to tell you that it was as I stood barefooted on the beach, the tangled seaweed dripping over me.”