If he had wished to put an end to their conversation La Vireville certainly succeeded, for at that Mme. de Guéfontaine, murmuring something about Henri and a meal, arose and left him. She had, for the time being, quite lost her beautiful pallor.
(3)
La Vireville had his way in the end, and rode with them at dusk to the sea, and Mme. de Guéfontaine walked beside the grey horse, throwing a glance now and then at the bandaged foot, which his rider could not get into the stirrup.
"It was all my fault," she said, when they had gone a little way, and L'Estournel, place of refuge and memories, was a memory once more.
"Pardon me, Madame," objected La Vireville from above her, "it was not you who dropped a barrel on my toes."
She gave a rather impatient sigh. "Do you always jest about yourself, M. le Chevalier?"
"Madame, what else would you have me to do? Does it not strike you as humorous, you who know the conditions of our warfare in Brittany, that when fighting begins again I should have, for a time at least, to lead my men over hedges and through the broom in a litter, which is the only method of conveyance that I can think of at the moment?" He laughed under his breath. "At any rate, my foot is a change of site for an injury. Last time, not so long ago, it was a knock on the head that I acquired."
"And in whose cause, pray, did you receive that?"
"But in the usual—no, parbleu, when I come to think of it, it was an extra. It was for—a child, a small boy."
"And what, if one may ask, were you doing that you got knocked on the head for a small boy?"