“Bravo!” cried one.
“C’est bien dit!” cried another.
“After all, the soil is in the blood,” said a third.
Monsieur Cazensac, the landlord, who stood listening, said with a certain Gascon mordancy:
“Scratch even a Minister and you will find a Frenchman.”
And so the discussion—and who shall say it was a profitless one?—went on evening after evening, as it had gone on, in some sort of fashion conditioned by circumstances for over forty years.
On Christmas Eve came Félise, convoyed as far as Périgueux, where Bigourdin met her train, by the promised man from Cook’s. It was a changed little Félise, flushed with health and armoured in sophistication that greeted Martin. Her first preoccupation was no longer the disasters that might have occurred under helpless male rule during her absence.
“I’ve had the time of my life,” she asserted with a curious lazy accent. “It would take weeks to tell you. Monte Carlo is too heavenly for words. Lucilla committed perjury and swore I was over twenty-one and got me into the rooms and into the Sports Club, and what do you think? I won a thousand francs,” she tapped her bosom. “I have it here in good French money.”
Martin stared. The face was the face of Félise, but the voice was the voice of Lucilla. The English too of Félise was no longer her pretty halting speech, but fluent, as though, by her frequentation of English-speaking folk, all the old vocabulary of childhood had returned, together with sundry accretions. She rattled off a succinct account of the loveliness of the Azure Coast, with its flowers and seas and sunshine, the motor drives she had taken, the lunches, dinners and suppers she had eaten, the people she had met. Lucilla seemed to have friends everywhere, mainly English and American. They had seldom been alone. Félise had lived all the time in a social whirl.
“You will find Brantôme very dull now, Félise,” said Martin.