Captain Twinely, awkward but anxious to please, was on his feet in an instant. He waited on the ladies, waited even on Hannah, whom he supposed to be Una’s maid. He did not notice that Una shrank from him. He probably would not have cared even if he had seen that she avoided touching his hand as she might have avoided some loathsome reptile. His thoughts and his eyes were all for the Comtesse. She did not shrink from him. Her wonderful eyes thrilled him again and again. He touched her hand, her hair, her clothes, as he handed her this or that to eat or drink. He grew hot and cold in turns with the excitement of her nearness. He was ecstatically, ridiculously happy.
He walked back to Dunseveric House with her. He promised to call on her the next day. He promised to leave troopers on guard round the house all night in case a fugitive rebel, wandering in the demesne, might frighten the Comtesse. He suggested another pic-nic. At last, reluctantly, lingeringly, he bade her farewell.
“Adieu, Monsieur le Capitaine,” said the Comtesse, “we shall expect you to-morrow then.”
She stretched out her hand to him. He stooped and kissed it. Then she turned from him and ran up the avenue after Una and Hannah. The captain watched her. He pulled himself together, reassumed his habitual swagger, tried to persuade himself that he looked on the Comtesse as he had long been accustomed to look on other women.
“A damned fine woman,” he said, “and a bit smitten with me. Begad, these French women have a great deal to recommend them. Thy catch fire at once. A man does not have to spend a month dilly-dallying with them, dancing attendance and looking like a fool while they are as cold as ice all the time. Give me a good full-blooded filly like this one.”
“Una,” said the Comtesse, when she overtook her niece. “Una, I positively can’t stand another day of that man. He’s odious. You’ll have to do him yourself to-morrow, and let me go to the young man in the cave.”
“But, Aunt Estelle, I thought you—you liked it. You looked as if you liked it.”
“Mon dieu!” said the Comtesse, laughing, “of course I looked as if I liked it. If I had looked as if I disliked it I could not have kept him for ten minutes, and then what would have happened to you, mademoiselle?”
“It was very, very good of you,” said Una, penitently. “I can never thank you enough.”
“Oh, it wasn’t so very good of me, and I don’t want to be thanked at all. I’ll tell you a secret, Una, and Hannah shall hear it too. I did like it. Now, what do you think?”