“Since I have been so fortunate in making such agreeable and charming acquaintance, I will eagerly avail myself of my good fortune.”
The party then began retracing their steps, and Bill, from his station, seeing them retiring, rose up; he was quietly smoking his pipe, eyeing all the movements of Monsieur Gramont, for whom he had imbibed a most inconceivable dislike from the very first day of their meeting, and hearing his master say he did not like that Monsieur Gramont, Bill doubly disliked him. He, however, had no dislike for the Frenchwomen; the men, he declared, were born his natural enemies, and the only one he was likely to be reconciled to was the old deaf gardener; but Monsieur Gramont was a tall, handsome man, with whom he felt a monstrous desire to pick a quarrel. The party going away without refreshment, and in which he considered he would have shared after they had finished, was caused by Monsieur Gramont’s intrusion, and this made Bill grumble.
He was descending the rocks, and was passing the Frenchman to get his basket, when Monsieur Gramont, unfolding his rod and landing net, turned suddenly round, and looking into Bill’s honest face, said, pointing to the net—
“Hold this a moment, my man, and I’ll thank you.”
Bill started back as if a thirty-two pound shot had made an attempt to pass between his legs, for the Frenchman spoke in unmistakable English. Bill was taken aback, and he at once replied—
“I’ll see you——first.”
But immediately recollecting his dumb character, and seeing his master waving his hand for him to come on, he glared at the cool, and collected, and smiling Frenchman, and uttered such a succession of unearthly sounds, that any one else would have been confounded; and then, with a look of unmistakable rage at Monsieur Gramont, he seized his basket, clenched his huge fist, and departed, whilst the Frenchman kept quietly putting his rod together, singing “Malbrook,” and other French airs.
“Well, blow me,” muttered Bill, “if I wouldn’t give twelve months’ pay to thrust my fist into that crapaud’s mouth! I’d spoil the beauty of his Moll Brook, the cursed frog-eating lubber! speaking English too, thinking to take me in. Ay, ay; sink me if it is not enough to capsise a fellow under bare poles.”
Thus grumbling and growling, and rather afraid his master would think he had not acted his part well, and, on reflecting, deeply regretting that he had not thrown Frenchman, rod, and all into the pool, he hurried on after the party.
As our hero and his fair companions proceeded towards the château, the conversation naturally turned upon the discovery which had just been made of Marie de Tourville being no other than Mabel Arden.