“Now that is really kind of you. Please get down from your horse. How can I talk to you when you are so high above me?”
The captain dismounted and gave his horse to one of the troopers. The Comtesse laid her hand on his arm and smiled at him.
“We have a little fête planned for to-day,” she said. “We are going to have a pic-nic by the sea. Will you not join us. It will be so kind of you. My niece wishes also to bathe. But I—I am not very anxious to go into the sea. Perhaps you and I might wait for her in some pleasant spot and prepare the pic-nic while she and her maid go to the bathing-place. What do you say, captain?”
“I shall be delighted,” he said, “quite delighted.”
Captain Twinely had never before been so smiled on by a pretty woman. Never before had such fine eyes looked into his with such an unmistakable challenge to flirtation. He was almost certain that he felt the Comtesse’s hand press his arm slightly. He grew pink in the face with pleasure.
“We must tell my niece.”
She leaned towards Captain Twinely and whispered in his ear. Her breath touched his cheek. The delicate, faint scent of her clothes reached him.
A confidence, entailing the close proximity of this desirable lady, was an unlooked-for delight.
“My dear niece is very young—a mere child, you understand me, unformed, gauche, what you call shy. You will make excuse for her want of manner.”
The apology was necessary. In Una’s face, if he had eyes for it at all, Captain Twinely might have seen something more than shyness. There was an expression of loathing on the girl’s lips and in her eyes when he stepped up to her, hat in hand.