“Then you shall lend me your horse after déjeuner, Artamène, and Mme de Trélan shall ride Zéphyr. He prefers to carry a lady, does he not, Mademoiselle?”
“I could not vouch for that, Monsieur le Duc. He has been more honoured since he ceased to do so.”
“You perhaps have not had time to realise, Valentine,” said Gaston, addressing his wife with a smile creeping round his mouth, “that, as in Eastern countries—and not only there, I fancy—where an accused, fearing an adverse judgment, is prompt to send a substantial present to the judge beforehand, so Zéphyr (himself of Eastern origin) came to me as a . . . bribe . . . and my hands, I fear, are somewhat stained by corruption.”
“How is that?” asked the Duchesse, glancing from her husband to the laughing girl.
“But my lips, by the same token, are sealed,” finished M. de Trélan.
“Mesdames, Messieurs, le déjeuner est servi,” announced the recently promoted Séraphin, approaching with the gait of a rustic and the livery of a major-domo.
CHAPTER II
THE YELLOW POPPY
So Gaston and Valentine rode alone to the sea.
They went at first through deep lanes, scarcely wide enough to ride abreast, where they lost sight of their goal, then, mounting a rise of sandy turf, came on it spread gloriously before them. A fresh breeze was blowing off the land, and the water was of a hundred vivid, changing hues—the clearest green, purple that was almost rose, and blue that was more than the blue of heaven. It was flecked with myriad little tips of foam that looked like sea-birds, for ever vanishing and reappearing, and the offshore wind ran over it in sudden violent caresses. Far out, it was the colour of a distant wood of hyacinths.