“I—melancholy?” she cried in her broken English, suddenly starting. “I—I really did not know, m’sieur. Oh, please forgive me.”
“No, I will not,” he said with mock reproach.
“You mustn’t be sad when I am with you.”
“But I’m not sad, I assure you,” she declared. And then, noticing that he was taking a cigarette from his case, she begged one.
Lola seldom, if ever, smoked in public, nevertheless she was passionately fond of those mild aromatic cigarettes which one gets in such perfection in Egypt, and often when with her friend, the cosmopolitan diplomat, she would indulge in one.
She hated the conventions which so often she set at naught—thus earning the reputation of a tomboy, so full of life and vivacity was she.
“Uncle is such a dreadful bore sometimes,” she sighed at last, dropping into French. “I rather wish we were, after all, going back to Paris.”
“He disagrees with you sometimes, eh?” laughed the man at her side. “All elderly people become bores more or less.”
“Yes. But there is surely no reason for such constant watching.”
“Watching!” exclaimed Waldron in feigned surprise. “Is he annoyed at this constant companionship of ours?”