baroness,” he replied, “for I assuredly came at the right moment.”
He stood looking down at her—a lithe, neat, rather small-made man. Then he turned to attend to his horse. The baroness was already busy with her hair. She rose to her feet and smoothed her habit.
“Ah, good!” she laughed. “There is no harm done. But you saved my life, my dear Lory. One cannot have two opinions as to that. If it were not that the colonel is watching us, I should embrace you. But I have not introduced you. This is Colonel Gilbert—my dear and good cousin, Lory de Vasselot. The colonel is from Bastia, by the way, and the Count de Vasselot pretends to be a Corsican. I mention it because it is only friendly to tell you that you have something more than the weather and my gratitude in common.”
She laughed as she spoke; then became suddenly grave, and sat down again with her hand to her eyes.
“And I am going to faint,” she added, with ghastly lips that tried to smile, “and nobody but you two men.”
“It is the reaction,” said Colonel Gilbert, in his soothing way. But he exchanged a quick glance with de Vasselot. “It will pass, baroness.”
“It is well to remember at such a moment that one is a sportswoman,” suggested de Vasselot.
“And that one has de Vasselot blood in one's veins, you mean. You may as well say it.” She rose as she spoke, and looked from one to the other with a brave laugh. “Bring me that horse,” she said.
De Vasselot conveyed by one inimitable gesture that he admired her spirit, but refused to obey her. Colonel Gilbert smiled contemplatively, He was of a different school—of that school of Frenchmen which owes its existence to Napoleon III.—impassive, almost taciturn—more British than the typical Briton. De Vasselot, on the contrary, was quick and vivacious. His fine-cut face and dark eyes expressed a hundred things that his tongue had no time to put into words. He was hard and brown and sunburnt, which at once made him manly despite his slight frame.
“Ah,” he cried, with a gay laugh, “that is better. But seriously, you know, you should have a patent stirrup—”
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