“Are you through with your lessons for the day?” asked Fair icily. “Because if you are, I’m going!” She whirled the red mallet about her head like a battle-axe, and sent it spinning far from her after the neglected ball. “Good-bye—I’m off. Tell the others I twisted my ankle—got a headache—tell them any old lie you think of——”
“But, Mademoiselle, you cannot——”
Fairfax Carter halted for a moment in her tumultuous progress, the wind whipping her leaf-brown skirts about her and sending the bright curls flying about the reckless, stubborn little face.
“Can’t I?” she called back defiantly. “Can’t I? Well, wait and see! I’m going to tell your precious Philippe de Lautrec just exactly what I think of a hero who spends his life resting on his laurels while his sisters work their fingers to the bone—and you and Foch and the Archangel Gabriel can’t stop me, so I’d advise you to stick to croquo-golf. Good-bye!”
She was gone in a brilliant whirl of flying skirts and scarf and hair. Young De Chartreuil watched her disappearing down the long hill that led past Daudin’s farm to the far gate of the château with an expression in which dismay was tempered by a grim satisfaction. After a moment he shrugged his shoulders briefly, retrieved the scarlet ball and mallet, and set off slowly toward the sounds of distant laughter that marked the other players. Well, let her go; she was richly in need of a lesson, that lovely little demon! And to think that for a moment he had dreamed—ah, name of Heaven, what an escape!——
Fair, in the meantime, raced lightly on her chosen way. She was in a towering rage at De Chartreuil for his presumptuous insolence, and in an even more towering rage at herself for the effect that it had had on her. Even immature reflection revealed the unmistakable fact that she had behaved a good deal more like a fish-wife than the traditional great lady. About the only things that she had failed to do were boxing his ears and screaming at the top of her lungs. And she had felt terribly—oh, but terribly—like doing both of them. No, it was all very well to have a temper, but it was a bad strategic error to lose it. Possession is nine points of the law, especially with tempers. Fortunately, the hateful De Chartreuil child had been even worse than she. He had looked at one time as though it would have been pure ecstasy to throttle the life out of her—the time that she had got in that neat thrust about peace-time slackers. Well, she was on her way to tell one of them exactly what she thought of him as fast as her stubby brown boots would carry her. She wrenched impatiently at the iron latch on the great north gate—it yielded with an unexpectedness that nearly threw her off her feet, and she heard it clang to behind her as she raced up the long alley of lime trees that led to the stone terrace. If she were lucky, she might find the object of her righteous wrath basking there in the sunlight, without so much as a book in his graceless hands, dreaming away the hours, his dark face turned to the golden fields of his inheritance. She had found him there before—and, yes, fate was with her—there he was now in his great chair with his back to the lime trees, lounging deep. For a moment she hesitated, her heart thundering in her ears, and then she swung recklessly across the sun-warmed flags, hands deep in her pockets, her chin tilted at an outrageous angle.
“Oh, there you are!” she hailed in her magic voice, but there was something behind the words that turned them from a salutation to a challenge.
Philippe le Gai sat quite still for a moment, and then, without rising, he flung her a radiant smile over his shoulder.
“And there are you!” he said. “All finished, the croquo-golf?”
“No—just finished for me. It’s a stupid game, don’t you think?”