“Americans,” said he. “Allow me to introduce to you the Honorable David Ritchie, whom you rejected a few moments ago.”
“Whom I rejected?” she exclaimed.
“Alas,” said Nick, with a commiserating glance at me, “he has the misfortune to be a lawyer.”
Mademoiselle shot at me the swiftest and shyest of glances, and turned to us once more her quivering shoulders. There was a brief silence.
“Mademoiselle?” said Nick, taking a step on the garden path.
“Monsieur?” she answered, without so much as looking around.
“What, now, would you take this gentleman to be?” he asked with an insistence not to be denied.
Again she was shaken with laughter, and suddenly to my surprise she turned and looked full at me.
“In English, Monsieur, you call it—a gallant?”
My face fairly tingled, and I heard Nick laughing with unseemly merriment.