“Dominie,” said the Bonnie Lassie, “you are a despicable old man.... I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Don’t stay long,” I pleaded. “Pity the blind.”
Her golden laughter floated back to me. But there was no mirth in her voice when she returned.
“It’s so dark in there I can hardly see. But the big man is sitting on a pile of ribs talking to Plooie, and Annie Oombrella’s face is all swollen with crying. I saw it in the window for a minute.”
Pro and con we argued what the probable event might be and how we could best meet it. So intent upon our discussion did we become that we did not note the approach of a stranger until he was within a few paces of the bench. With my crippled vision I apprehended him only as very tall and straight and wearing a loose cape. The effect upon the Bonnie Lassie of his approach was surprising. I heard her give a little gasp. She got up from the bench. Her hand fell upon my shoulder. It was trembling. Where, I wondered, had those two met and in what circumstances, that the mere sight of the stranger caused such emotion in the unusually self-controlled wife of Cyrus Staten. The man spoke quickly in a deep and curiously melancholy voice:
“Madame perhaps does me the honor to remember me?”
“I—I—I—” began the Bonnie Lassie.
“The Comte de Tournon. At Trouville we met, was it not? Several years since?”
“Y-yes. Certainly. At Trouville.”
(Now I happen to know that the Bonnie Lassie has never been at Trouville, which did not assuage my suspicions.)