She flung her arms round the huge man’s neck.
“Je t’adore, mon petit oncle,” she cried.
Ten minutes afterwards, with bunch of keys slung at her waist, she was busy restoring to order the chaos of the interregnum. Terrible things had happened during the absence of the feminine eye. Even Martin shared the universal reprimand. For Félise, manageress of hotel, and Félise, storm-tossed little human soul, were two entirely different entities.
“My dear Martin, how could you and my uncle pass these napkins from that infamous old thief of a laundress. They are black!”
And ruthlessly she flicked a napkin folded mitre-wise from the centre table before the eyes of the folder and revealed its dingy turpitude.
“It is well that I am back,” she declared.
“It is indeed, Mademoiselle Félise,” said Martin.
She gave him a swift little glance out of the tail of her eye, before she sped away, and the corners of her lips drooped as though in disappointment. Then perhaps reflecting that she had been addressing the waiter and not the man, her face cleared. At all events he had taken her rating in good part.
Dinner had already begun and the hungry commercials, napkins at neck, were finishing their soup lustily, when Lucilla entered the dining room. The open Medici collar to a grey velvet dress shewed the graceful setting of her neck and harmonised with the brown hair brushed up from the forehead. She advanced smiling and stately, giving the impression of the perfect product of a new civilisation. Martin, who had but seen her for a few seconds in the dusk confusedly clad in furs, stood spell-bound, a pile of used soup-plates in his hands. Never had so radiant an apparition swum before his gaze. Bigourdin, dining as usual with Félise, rose immediately and conducted his guest to the little table by the terrace where once Martin and Corinna had sat. It was specially adorned with tawny chrysanthemums.