“Oh,” she said, in ungracious astonishment, “then you are not on the grave’s awful verge,... are you?”
“I hope you didn’t expect to discover me there?” I replied, laughing.
“Expect it? Indeed I did, monsieur,... or I shouldn’t be here at sunrise, scratching at your door for news of you. This,” she said, petulantly, “is enough to vex any saint!”
“Any other saint,” I corrected, gravely. “I admit it, mademoiselle, I am a nuisance; so is my comrade. We have only to express our deep gratitude and go.”
“Go? Do you think we will let you go, with all those 313 bandits roaming the moors outside our windows? And you call that gratitude?”
“Does Madame de Vassart desire us to stay?” I asked, trying not to speak too eagerly.
Sylvia Elven gave me a scornful glance.
“Must we implore you, monsieur, to protect us? We will, if you wish it. I know I’m ill-humored, but it’s scarcely daybreak, and we’ve sat up all night on your account—Madame de Vassart would not allow me to go to bed—and if I am brusque with you, remember I was obliged to sleep in a chair—and I hope you feel that you have put me to very great inconvenience.”
“I feel that way ... about Madame de Vassart,” I said, laughing at the pretty, pouting mouth and sleepy eyes of this amusingly exasperated young girl, who resembled a rumpled Dresden shepherdess more than anything else. I added that we would be glad to stay until the communist free-rifles took themselves off. For which she thanked me with an exaggerated courtesy and retired, furiously conscious that she had not only slept in her clothes, but that she looked it.
“That was Madame de Vassart’s companion, wasn’t it?” asked Speed.