"O mademoiselle! how lovely you are with those flowers in your hair!" cried out the enamored gardener, once more forgetful of his life-long enthusiasm, the pears and roses, and only mindful of the unexpected form of female seduction offered to his distracted gaze. "I never knew that roses could be so beautiful," he added, with a genuineness which would have touched any being less merciless than a girl of eighteen, bent on piquing a more indifferent admirer into something like jealousy.
"It is your roses," said Lisa, laughing, "that make me, what you call lovely. I don't make the roses. But what have you peeping out of your pocket?" she inquired, fearing that the conversation was about to assume a more tender character than she desired; "a note I should think"—
"Ah, yes! I had forgotten," said poor François, with a sigh over his own hopeless perturbation. "It is from Mme. la Contesse to the Colonel de Villefort, and it was to be given without delay."
"Ulysse, Ulysse," cried Lisa, gladly availing herself of this welcome diversion, "here is a note for you."
"Do you not see, mademoiselle," said Ulysse, pettishly, not entirely pleased with François and his flowers, "do you not see that I am watering the colonel's horse? I should think, too, that the bearer of a note might deliver it himself."
François, with a soothing sense of present preferment, was about to make a good-natured reply, when the colloquy was terminated by a sonorous voice from an upper window shouting, "Ulysse!"
"Mon colonel."
"Saddle one of my horses immediately."
"Impossible to use either to-day, mon colonel; one limps, and I have taken Mars to the blacksmith's, for he cast a shoe this morning."