Rupert kissed her hand in a very un-sonlike fashion and looked at her lips.
"I want to comfort you," he said, "to take pain out of your life."
"You cannot do that, Rupert." She quoted gently--"'Pain is the Lord of Life--none can escape from its net.'" Something in his eyes made her go on steadily. "My pain is chiefly caused by love. I love my little Brannie's father, Rupert--there can never be any other man in my life. He speaks to me of all those things which I have found not nor shall find!"
Rupert bowed his head again over her hand, his boyish mouth drawn in a straight line. It was unfortunate that the Comtesse, whom the femme de ménage had admitted to the entrance hall, should have come softly in at that moment.
"Ah, the nice Poulot!" she twittered merrily. "Taking the lessons of deportment from the charmante Madame Val!" And burst into happy laughter.
But she had not called it "deportment" when she reported the episode to Haidee a few days later.
"He is gone, our Poulot," she said mournfully. "She has put into bandages his hands and foots--a slave!"
"He did not seem very bandaged last time he came out here," answered Haidee rather snappishly, not even amused any more by the Comtesse's weird English.
"Ah, but you do not see him with her, my child! It is amazing how she finds the time and energy for so much 'flirt'!--She is enormous!--and with the sick lover in the third atelier all the same time!"
"The sick lover! Comtesse, what do you mean?"