We turned sharp round.
It was she without a doubt who had addressed us: she spurred her pony to meet us, stopped him, and said with the sweetest painful attempt at accuracy in pronouncing a foreign tongue:
'I sthink you go a wrong way?'
Our hats flew off again, and bareheaded, I seized the reply before Temple could speak.
'Is not this, may I ask you, the way to Sarkeld?'
She gathered up her knowledge of English deliberately.
'Yes, one goes to Sarkeld by sthis way here, but to-day goes everybody up to our Bella Vista, and I entreat you do not miss it, for it is some-s-thing to write to your home of.'
'Up at the tower, then? Oh, we were there last night, and saw the bronze horse, mademoiselle.'
'Yes, I know. I called on my poor sick woman in a hut where you fell asleep, sirs. Her little ones are my lambs; she has been of our household; she is good; and they said, two young, strange, small gentlemen have gone for Sarkeld; and I supposed, sthey cannot know all go to our Bella Vista to-day.'
'You knew at once we were English, mademoiselle?'