“If I were Monsieur François Delaunay,” continued Roger, recovering his spirits slightly, “would you so belabor me for being a little too gallant to a charming young lady, like Mademoiselle d’Orantia?”
“Oh, François, he is a sheep of a man, if you please; he has no red blood in him.”
Roger managed, however, to keep Madame de Beaumanoir’s denunciations directed toward himself, and they returned to the inn, the old lady rating him soundly the whole way. When they arrived at the door, Berwick and François were awaiting them.
Michelle escaped to her room, while Madame de Beaumanoir, standing under the swinging lantern in the doorway, gave Roger a new and complete scolding in French, as she had done in English, the chairmen and porters standing around and grinning, Berwick urging her on, and supplying fuel for the fire of her wrath, François mutely sympathetic, and Roger, hat in hand, in speechless humility. When at last she retired, leaving Roger to the tender mercies of Berwick, he registered a vow before high Heaven that never would he give cause for offence to Madame de Beaumanoir again, if he should live to be a thousand years old.
The next day they made Bar-sur-Aube, and in a day or two more they were climbing the rough sides of the mountains of the Vosges.
In the pleasant champagne country it had been spring, with a glint of summer, but in the Vosges they returned to winter. The air was sharp and cold, the inns were far apart and comfortless. The streams, swollen by the melting snow and the spring rains, had in many cases washed the bridges away. The travellers were delayed at many rivers, and sometimes passed days in wretched houses of entertainment, and once even in a charcoal-burner’s hut. They were two weeks in crossing the mountain ranges.
But they were two happy weeks to Egremont and Michelle, in spite of rain and wind and cold and privations.
Roger’s little volume of Ronsard’s poems was a delight to him. He wished the chance to read those passionate, sweet poems to Michelle, and cunningly contrived it, by taking the volume out of his breast when he knew Michelle was observing him, and reading it as he jogged along on Merrylegs. Of course, a woman must know what a man is reading whenever she sees a book in his hand. Roger always replaced his dear Ronsard with an ostentatious show of secrecy, in his breast, as soon as he saw Michelle’s attention openly fixed on him. It was not long before she asked him what book was that he read so often and seemed so anxious to conceal.
“A book, madam, in which you would take no interest. Yet will I show it to you if you really wish to see it.”
This was most vexatious. She really wished to see it, but she really did not wish to acknowledge this. But Roger deliberately putting the book back into his breast, Michelle could not forbear asking to see it. She assumed a careless tone, but that did not deceive Roger. At once her eyes sparkled.