"Great heavens!" he exclaimed, "who has dared to offer her annoyance?"
"Mice, my dear Savage, beetles, and, to be quite plain with you, drains. Yes, you may well make a grimace. That mild-looking little chalet yonder across the valley—the one with the parterre of marigolds—which she had rented without preliminary inspection, proved a veritable pest-house. When I arrived in July—mainly with a view to safeguarding your interests, since frankly I hold most seaside places in abhorrence—"
"How can I ever be sufficiently grateful to you!" the young man murmured fervently.
"I have no child—and—perhaps, at my age, even the ghost, even the fiction, of motherhood is better than nothing.—But this is a digression—sentimental or scientific, which? To return. I found Madame Vernois nervous and debilitated, little Bette with a temperature and sore throat, the indispensable maid Henriette drowned in tears and sulks, and our poor, beautiful Gabrielle in a most admired distraction."
Harrowed by which description, her hearer gave way to smothered imprecations.
"Exactly. At the time I too made little remarks. Then I sniffed once—twice. Twice was quite sufficient. Better sacrifice a month's rent than be poisoned. Without ceremony I bundled them over here, bag and baggage, since when, dear creatures, they flourish. The Bernards, who had taken the villa next door to the pest-house, also had cause for dissatisfaction. They joined us. This addition to our party I could have dispensed with. I entertain the highest respect for M. Bernard's acquirements, only I could wish he had learned early in life that imparting information and making conversation are by no means synonymous. Never am I alone with him for over five minutes but he positively lapidates me with the remains of the architectural past. Conversation should be interchange of opinions, ideas, experiences, not a bombardment with facts which one is perfectly competent to read up for oneself if one's a mind to. Should you ever be tempted to start a hobby—we none of us know what we may come to!—avoid archæology, my dear Savage, I implore you, out of retrospective tenderness for my sufferings during the last few weeks! Yes—and then I must record one truly alarming episode. The great Zélie and a horde of her nauseating adherents threatened a descent upon Madame St. Leger. Promptly I engaged all the vacant rooms in the hotel—fortunately they weren't very numerous—until the peril was over-past."
"You are not only the kindest and the most superb of friends, but you are a great general. You should command armies," Adrian declared. "Forever shall archæology be anathema to me!"
"Saving the proposed raid of the objectionable Zélie, our history has been of the simplest," Anastasia continued. "People, pleasant and unpleasant, have come and gone; we remain—and there's the sum total of it. Now tell me about yourself. How long do we keep you?"
"Alas, only until this evening. I must go back to Rouen, where my letters await me. We have been moving daily from place to place, as inclination suggested. To-morrow I must rejoin René Dax—for a few days, a week probably, to observe how the new treatment prospers. It is decided that he shall remain in the country-house, near Caen, of an intelligent young doctor who has been in attendance upon him during our touring. His man-servant, of course, is with him. And there he can also have his pet animals."
"Will he recover?"