“Ah, ah!” cried he, opening his small blue eyes very wide, so that they looked like two glass marbles in an undulating field of pink. “Now I begin to perceive! Eccentric! Mon Dieu, I am with you there. Our friend is eccentric beyond all experience!” He turned quickly to the girl. “Did he alarm you then, mademoiselle, by his eccentricity? What is it that he has done?”
Again she hesitated, and again Bayre spoke for her.
“My uncle showed no violence to her,” he said, “and I think it a pity she ever came away.”
Monsieur Blaise assented vehemently, with so many noddings of his head, that he looked like one of those toy figures whose loose heads swing in an open neck.
“Pity! Yes, yes, it is a pity,” he assented. “If you were afraid, Miss Eden, you should have consulted me. A word to your future husband—”
Miss Eden laughed a little and interrupted him.
“Oh, surely, Monsieur Blaise, you can’t want to marry me still? I am too erratic for you, you know.”
“Erratic, yes, so you are,” agreed the stout gentleman with deliberation. “But, enfin, it must be that one’s wife have some defects! And if one knows them beforehand, one is prepared.”
Miss Eden grew pale with consternation.
“But,” she began in a faint voice.