She snatched her head away from his hand, and dropped him an extravagant French curtsy. “Where I pleased, my master.”
The man was shaking with anger.
“How did you get in?”
She waved her gloved hand towards the hall. “Ring the bell—call in your servants—find out.”
“To make a bigger fool of myself?”
“Why not, since you were willing to belittle me before them, by your silly orders this morning? You told the eunuch not to let me go out, and when I returned, I had to use a ruse to enter my own home, where my baby boy is. You are a brute and a jealous fiend, and I am the most unhappy of wives,” and thereupon she burst into the most pathetic sobbing, and threw herself upon me, holding me fast to her.
“Why, Beauty,” he expostulated in tender tones, “you know I have never been unkind to you, and this is the first time I have even thought of punishing you.”
She continued to sob without abatement. He came near us, and timidly tried to take her in his arms. To my surprise she went to him like a lamb, kissing him and crying, and I slipped out of the room, once more convinced that men were mere babes in the hands of designing women.
That night I waited in vain for her to come and tell me where she had been, and while waiting I fell asleep. After breakfast the next morning she came to my room, beaming, and looking prettier than ever.
“Siege is raised,” she cried, sitting down cross-legged on the rug. “Blossom of the almond-tree, we can go for a picnic to any cemetery we like, and I am to have a pair of horses all my own, and the loveliest low victoria that France can manufacture.” She put her finger-tips together, and looked up at me enjoying the effect of her words, and continued: “I am also going to have a bigger allowance, and when I have a little girl, I may give her a French name. In exchange, I shall not throw kissed roses to anyone, and I am not going to fib for a long, long time.”