“Ah,” he cried, with a gay laugh, “that is better. But seriously, you know, you should have a patent stirrup—”
He broke off, described the patent stirrup in three gestures, how it opened and released the foot. He showed the rider falling, the horse galloping away, the released lady-rider rising to her feet and satisfying herself that no bones were broken—all in three more gestures.
“Voilà!” he said; “I shall send you one.”
“And you as poor—as poor,” said the baroness, whose husband was of the new nobility, which is based, as all the world knows, on solid manufacture. “My friend, you cannot afford it.”
“I cannot afford to lose you” he said, with a sudden gravity, and with eyes which, to the uninitiated, would undoubtedly have conveyed the impression that she was the whole world to him. “Besides,” he added, as an after-thought, “it is only sixteen francs.”
The baroness threw up her gay brown eyes.
“Just Heaven,” she exclaimed, “what it is to be able to inspire such affection—to be valued at sixteen francs!”
Then—for she was as quick and changeable as himself—she turned, and touched his arm with her thickly-gloved hand.
“Seriously, my cousin, I cannot thank you, and you, Colonel Gilbert, for your promptness and your skill. And as to my stupid husband, you know, he has no words; when I tell him, he will only grunt behind his great moustache, and he will never thank you, and will never forget. Never! Remember that.” And with a wave of the riding-whip, which was attached to her wrist, she described eternity.
De Vasselot turned with a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders, and busied himself with the girths of his saddle. At the touch and the sight of the buckles, his eyes became grave and earnest. And it is not only Frenchmen who cherish this cult of the horse, making false gods of saddle and bridle, and a sacred temple of the harness-room. Very seriously de Vasselot shifted the side-saddle from the Arab to his own large and gentle horse—a wise old charger with a Roman nose, who never wasted his mettle in park tricks, but served honestly the Government that paid his forage.