Suddenly the melody ceased, and a young Bretonne girl appeared in the doorway, courtesying to me and saying in perfect English: “How do you do, Mr. Scarlett; and how do you like my spinning songs, if you please?”
The girl was Mademoiselle Sylvia Elven, the marvellously clever actress from the Odéon, the same young woman who had played the Alsacienne at La Trappe, as perfectly in voice and costume as she now played the Bretonne.
“You need not be astonished at all,” she said, calmly, “if you will only reflect that my name is Elven, which is also the name of a Breton town. Naturally, I am a Bretonne from Elven, and my own name is 217 Duhamel—Sylvenne Duhamel. I thought I ought to tell you, so that you would not think me too clever and try to carry me off on your horse again.”
I laughed uncertainly; clever women who talk cleverly always disturb me. Besides, somehow, I felt she was not speaking the truth, yet I could not imagine why she should lie to me.
“You were more fluent to the helpless turkey-girl,” she suggested, maliciously.
I had absolutely nothing to say, which appeared to gratify her, for she dimpled and smiled under her snowy-winged coiffe, from which a thick gold strand of hair curled on her forehead—a sad bit of coquetry in a Bretonne from Elven, if she told the truth.
“I only came to renew an old and deeply valued friendship,” she said, with mock sentimentality; “I am going back to my flax now.”
However, she did not move.
“And, by-the-way,” she said, languidly, “is there in your intellectual circus company a young gentleman whose name is Eyre?”
“Kelly Eyre? Yes,” I said, sulkily.