“Excellent Jeanne!” he at once exclaimed. “I must manage to find time to go and see her.” He added: “She has a sister who keeps an hotel in the Condamine. My father was saying only to-day that Jeanne’s sister had written to him about some man in her hotel who desired a card of admission to the Club. Papa is so good-natured!”
Lily made no answer to that remark. She did not think the Count at all good-natured. He was entirely absorbed in himself, and in his own concerns. But, of course, there could be no doubt at all about his great love for his son.
They were nearing La Solitude when Lily bethought herself of what had happened in the restaurant about the gold snuff-box. “I want to ask you something,” she said suddenly.
Beppo turned his face down on his pretty companion. “Ask me anything you like,” he exclaimed gaily. “And I promise that you shall have a true answer!”
“It’s only,” she said, rather nervously, “that I wish you would show me that lovely little cigarette-box again, Beppo. Is it really true that you bought it in Milan? Somehow I don’t think it is——”
“Well, no,” Beppo answered smiling. “It is not true. But you are a clever little witch to have discovered the fact!”
He stopped the car. They were on a lonely cross-road, and Lily will always remember the exact spot, and what was said there, though at the time it did not make very much impression on her.
He took the gold box out of his pocket and handed it to her.
“Look here!” he exclaimed. “If you’ve taken such a fancy to it, allow me to present it to you, my fair cousin—just as a souvenir?”
How strange that he should say that—it was almost exactly what poor George Ponting had said!