She drew herself up haughtily, and eyed him for a moment. “It appears that your coach has upset you in more ways than one. I apologize for interrupting you in your walk. Beyond doubt, your friend there is very charming. You are impatient to say farewell to me.”
“Nothing more than ‘au revoir,’ I hope.”
She let her haughtiness slip from her like a garment, and, leaning forward, she touched with her soft fingers his hand which rested upon the carriage door.
“You will come here and sit beside me, Philip? Yes?” Her eyes dwelt upon his with an expectation that was almost a command.
“You force me to seem discourteous,” he said, biting his lips, “but—”
“There! do not distress yourself,” she exclaimed with a laugh, and leaning back in her seat. “Adieu! I do not recognize you in England: in Paris you were not so much an Englishman. If we meet in Paris perhaps we shall know each other again. Madame Cabot, have the goodness to tell the coachman to drive on.” These words were spoken in French.
Madame Cabot, the elderly and unbeautiful lady already alluded to, who had sat during this colloquy with a face as unmoved as if English were to her the same as Choctaw, gave the order desired, the horses started, and Philip Lancaster, left alone by the roadside, put on his hat, with a curve of his lip that was not either a smile or a sneer.
Mr. Grant, meanwhile, had strolled onward, and was now some distance down the road. He waited for Lancaster to rejoin him, holding his open snuff-box in his hand; and when the young man came up, he offered him a pinch, which the latter declined. The two walked on together for several minutes in silence, Lancaster only having said, “I am sorry to have kept you waiting—an acquaintance whom I met abroad;” to which Mr. Grant had replied by a mere nod of the head. By-and-by, however, he said, in resumption of the conversation which had been going on previous to the Marquise’s interruption:
“Is it many years then since you left England?”
“Seven or eight—long enough for a man of my age. But you have been absent even longer?”