a smack like a hundred kisses, a spitting sacré chien! from the discomfited assailant, as he staggered back with a face of fury and a hand held to his ear, and, seeing, stood to await the upshot, a questioning smile upon his lips. Both parties realised his presence at the same instant, and checked the issue of hot words which was beginning to join between them. The girl, giving a defiant toss to her chin, hurried past Le Sage and out of the room; M. Louis Cabanis returned to his business with the expression of a robbed wild-cat. 

 Le Sage said nothing until he was being presently helped on with his coat, and then suddenly challenging the valet, eye to eye, he nodded, and congratulated him:— 

 “That is better, my friend. It is not logical, you know, for the injurer to nurse the grievance.” 

 The Gascon looked at his master gravely. 

 “Will you tell me who is the injurer, Monsieur?” 

 “Surely,” answered Le Sage, “it cannot be she, in these first few hours of your acquaintance?” 

 “But if she had appeared to encourage me, Monsieur?” 

 The Baron laughed. 

 “The only appearance to be trusted in a pretty woman, Louis, is her prettiness.” 

 “Monsieur, is her ravishing loveliness.” 

 “Well, well, Louis, as you will. Only bear it no grudge.” 

 He turned away from a parting keen scrutiny of the dark, handsome face, and left the room, softly carolling. The little episode had amused rather than surprised him. Certainly it had seemed to point, in respect of time, to a quite record enslavement on the Gascon’s part; but then the provocation to that passionate impressionable nature! For the girl had been really amazingly pretty, with that cast of feature, that Hebe-like beauty of hair and eye and complexion about whose fascination no two properly constituted minds could disagree. She was a domestic servant—and she was a young morning goddess, fresh from the unsullied dawn of Nature, a Psyche, a butterfly, a Cressid like enough. “If I 

 Prev. P 19/171 next