“It will be Madame Riano’s business, though,” darkly hinted Gaston Cheverny.
At this veiled threat to tell her aunt, Mademoiselle Capello showed she was but a child after all, for she broke down, crying:
“I will promise, Monsieur.”
There was but a single coach in sight, and while Gaston Cheverny was haranguing Mademoiselle Capello, I had engaged it to take her home. The coachman drove up, I opened the door and invited mademoiselle to enter. She recognized me at once, and curtsied deeply.
“Thank you, Monsieur,” she said with the greatest sweetness in the world. It was the first time she ever spoke to me—and can I ever forget it?
“Thank you, Monsieur; I do not know your name, but I know you followed me to this dreadful place to take care of me—and you have treated me with the utmost respect, Monsieur, and have not dared to reprove or threaten me, and I thank you for that, too!”
She gave a sidelong glance out of her eloquent eyes at Gaston Cheverny, that I would not have had her give me for the best horse in the king’s stables. The young man did not relish it, and straightway undertook to make me responsible for his chagrin. He scowled at me when I made my bow to Mademoiselle Capello, and attempted to divide the honor with me of putting her in the coach, which, after all, old Peter did. The door slammed, the coach rattled off, with Peter upon the box, and Mademoiselle Capello sitting in offended majesty within.