In truth, dear as Roger was to Bess, the parting, borne so calmly on her part, was robbed of much of its sting. The coach was the outward and visible sign that she had been raised from her ignoble estate, and the thought comforted her simple soul. And St. Germains was but fourteen miles from Paris, and the semi-weekly cart was a great comfort to her mind. So she set forth on her momentous journey with a light heart, and little anticipated a trifling though noisy misadventure which was to befall her before she had been an hour upon the road.
It was a crisp, bright morning, and they had jogged along steadily on the highway, Bess sitting majestically on the back seat of the coach, enjoying herself hugely. It is true that the dazzling color of her cheeks was somewhat paled, and she had certain qualms which the jerky motion of a coach is wont to impart to one unused to it. But Bess had a soul above such trifles, and would have endured the agonies of martyrdom with a high spirit, if only so she could have enjoyed her new and delicious splendors. She was saying to herself for the hundredth time, “To think that I, Red Bess, be riding to Paris in a coach,” when there was a violent shock of collision, and Bess found herself almost pitched through the coach window on the highroad. She recovered her lost balance quickly, and then found that a wheel had come off, and her imposing equipage lay ignominiously tip-tilted in the road. Papa Mazet had dismounted from his tall charger, but found himself quite unequal to cope with such a catastrophe; nor could the postilions repair the injury. They had, however, passed the shop of a blacksmith only half a mile back, and Papa Mazet, putting spurs to his tall horse, trotted back to fetch the blacksmith.
Bess chose rather to remain in the coach, tip-tilted as it was; for the equipage was invested with a kind of superstitious reverence in her mind, and she was seriously afraid of bad luck if she once put her foot to the ground before dismounting at Paris. So sitting at an uncomfortable angle, and barricaded with cushions, she prepared to await with patience Papa Mazet’s return with help.
Presently there was a great clattering on the road, and a chariot and four, very splendidly equipped, came thundering along, and drew up directly by the side of Bess’s disabled equipage; and peering out of the window directly upon Bess was a little, bright-eyed old woman, gorgeously dressed, and powdered. She occupied the whole of the back seat. On the front seat was the dark-eyed, elegant girl that Bess had seen in the meadow first with Roger, and had afterward met in the park, and who was, as Roger said, the Princess Michelle.
“What have we here?” cried Madame de Beaumanoir, in French.
“An accident, madam,” replied Bess, in such French as she could muster.
“Why don’t you get out of the coach, girl?” asked Madame de Beaumanoir.
“Because I don’t choose to,” coolly replied Bess.
The presence of Michelle, the calm unconcern with which she surveyed the scene, had in it something irritating to Bess. This was the girl of whom she tried to make Roger Egremont speak and he would not, beyond a few colorless phrases. Bess’s own imagination supplied enough to make her dislike Michelle and it lighted a fire in her eyes, and brought the blood to her cheek, at this chance meeting.
Madame de Beaumanoir was quite indignant at Bess’s debonair reply, and turning to Michelle, cried in English,—