"Monsieur Fregeau!" a voice called softly in excellent French from the rear door. "Nanette is struggling with a valise on the back stairs that is much too heavy for her, and perhaps if you—"
Papa Fregeau's mouth closed, opened again—and, in his haste to make a bow, the cognac glass became a shower of tinkling splinters on the floor.
"But immediatement! Instantly, Mademoiselle!" cried Papa Fregeau effusively. "On the moment! A valise that is too heavy for her! It is a sacrilege! It is unpardonable! Instantly, Mademoiselle, on the instant! On the moment!"—and he rushed from the room.
She stood in the doorway; and, from under bewitchingly half closed lids, the grey eyes met Jean's. And under her gaze that was quite calm, unruffled, self-possessed now, the blood rushed tingling again through his veins, and again he felt it mounting to his cheeks. She wore no hat now; and, with the sun's last rays through the doorway falling softly upon her wealth of hair, it was as though it were a wondrously woven mass of glinting bronze that crowned her head.
Jean's cap was in his hand.
"Oh!" she said. "You are the"—there was just a trace of hesitation over the choice of the word—"the man who passed us on the bridge a little while ago, aren't you?"
There was something, a sort of indefinable challenge, in the voice and eyes, a carelessness that, well as it was simulated, was not wholly genuine. Jean's eyes met the grey ones, held them—and suddenly he smiled, accepting the challenge.
"It is good of mademoiselle to recognise me," he answered.
She stared at him for an instant, her eyes opening wide; and then, with a contagious, impulsive laugh, she came forward into the room.
"Of course!" she cried. "You would answer like that! I knew it! You are less like a fisherman, for all your clothes, than any man I ever saw."