“I will tell you something,” said Eustacie, incensed. “Whenever I recount to you an interesting story you make me an answer which is like—which is like those snuffers— enfin! ”
“I’m sorry,” said Shield, rather startled.
“Well, I am sorry too,” said Eustacie, getting up from the sofa, “because it makes it very difficult to converse. I shall wish you good night, mon cousin.”
If she expected him to try to detain her she was disappointed. He merely bowed formally and opened the door for her to pass out of the room.
Five minutes later her maid, hurrying to her bedchamber in answer to a somewhat vehement tug at the bellrope, found her seated before her mirror, stormily regarding her own reflection.
“I will undress, and I will go to bed,” announced Eustacie.’
“Yes, miss.”
“And I wish, moreover, that I had gone to Madame Guillotine in a tumbril, alone! ”
Country-bred Lucy, a far more appreciative audience than Sir Tristram, gave a shudder, and said: “Oh, miss, don’t speak of such a thing! To think of you having your head cut off, and you so young and beautiful!”
Eustacie stepped out of her muslin gown, and pushed her arms into the wrapper Lucy was holding. “And I should have worn a white dress, and even the sans-culottes would have been sorry to have seen me in a tumbril!”