“Monsieur Blaise, Mr Bayre!” cried she, passionately, “you shall not pass me without speaking. I demand to know why you came and why you went away so quickly. What have you learnt? What have you found out?”
It maddened Bayre to hear the cold and cutting tone in which his companion replied to the unhappy girl.
“Found out, mademoiselle! Found out! I do not understand. We have found nothing out. Is there anything to find?”
She brushed aside these incoherent evasions with an impatient gesture.
“What nonsense!” she cried passionately. “Do you forget that you discussed my guardian’s eccentricity this very morning, and in my presence?”
Monsieur Blaise looked uncomfortable.
“We may have done,” he said vaguely. “I do not remember. We are all eccentric more or less.”
“Why did you come to see him?”
“Why? Why? I—I—we go to see him, to—to—ma foi, mademoiselle, since you have developed eccentricities yourself, since you have the habit of to disappear from your guardian’s house without to inform your friends, I go to your guardian for to formally renounce my pretensions to your hand.”
Bayre was furious at the coolly insolent manner in which Monsieur Blaise made this false statement. But Miss Eden, without allowing him to interfere, went on quietly, her temper quite unruffled,—