She pointed towards the Queen and the Gentlewoman. He was in high spirits, and he made open confession.
“I saw you ten minutes ago,” he declared, “and since then I have been endeavouring to make myself an acceptable travelling companion. But don’t begin to study the fashions yet, please. Tell me how it is that after looking all over London for three days for you, I find you here.”
“It is the unexpected,” she remarked, “which always happens. But after all there is nothing mysterious about it. I am going down to a little house which my uncle has taken, somewhere near Cromer. You will think it odd, I suppose, considering his deformity, but he is devoted to golf, and some one has been telling him that Norfolk is the proper county to go to.”
“And you?” he asked.
She shook her head disconsolately.
“I am afraid I am not English enough to care much for games,” she admitted. “I like riding and archery, and I used to shoot a little, but to go into the country at this time of the year to play any game seems to me positively barbarous. London is quite dull enough—but the country—and the English country, too!—well, I have been engrossed in self-pity ever since my uncle announced his plans.”
“I do not imagine,” he said smiling, “that you care very much for England.”
“I do not imagine,” she admitted promptly, “that I do. I am a Frenchwoman, you see, and to me there is no city on earth like Paris, and no country like my own.”
“The women of your nation,” he remarked, “are always patriotic. I have never met a Frenchwoman who cared for England.”