He offered his left hand to assist the lady up the steps.
"I had the mischance to injure my right hand the other day," he explained. "It is needful to keep it from the air."
It was thrust into the pocket of his coat.
"The Frenchman is vastly polite," said Mrs. Merriman to her daughter, as they preceded him up the path to the house. "But there, that is the way with their nation."
"Hush, mamma!" said Phyllis, "he may understand English.
"I do not like his smile," she added in a whisper.
"La, my dear, it means nothing; it comes natural to a Frenchman. He looks quite genteel, you must confess; I should not be surprised if he were a somebody in his own land."
As if in response to the implied question, the man moved to her side, and, in a manner of great deference, said:
"Your jamadar named you to me, Madam; I feel that I ought to explain who I am. My name is Jacques de Bonnefon--a name, I may say it without boasting, once even better known at the court of his Majesty, King Louis the Fifteenth, than in Chandernagore. Alas, Madam fortune is a fickle jade. Here I am now, in Bengal, slowly retrieving by honest commerce a patrimony of which my lamented father was not too careful."
"There! What did I say?" whispered Mrs. Merriman to her daughter as Monsieur de Bonnefon went forward to meet them on the threshold of his veranda. "A noble in misfortune! I only hope his wife is presentable."