anxiety but keeping his voice low.
“He told me that if I served him in the house and he spent the evening out, that I must wait up till he came home. He told me that any one I served would expect that. I was waiting for you.”
He met her eyes, frankly this time. There was a stern but kindly light in his own and a sense of great relief in has heart. It was not for the child to know that his knees were trembling.
“Forget everything that such a beast has told you,” he enjoined. “Go to your room at once and stay there.”
She rose obediently to her feet, but she was shivering as though his words had hurt her. He laid his hands upon her shoulders and kissed her lightly upon either cheek. He could almost feel the warmth of her inviting lips as he passed them by.
“Now run,” he ordered.
He entered his room, closed the door and listened to her departing footsteps. As soon as there was silence, he turned the key very softly and threw wide open both his windows. Already the streak of light had grown broader and the moon paler. There was only one nightingale left in the valley, still singing faintly. Here and there, along the lanes, the carts with their swaying lanterns were moving—ghostly, obscure objects. And all the time the perfume of the orange blossoms. He thought of the old woman’s speech—
“Au temps de ‘la fleur’ ils sont tous en folie!”
The two friends lunched together a few days later under a striped umbrella upon the terrace of Juan-les-Pins Casino. Already the early heat had drawn the crowds to the sands below. There was a fair sprinkling of bathers, a great many more lying about enjoying a sun bath. The suggestion of a mistral had given a faint tang to the sea breeze. The Estérels had thrown off their silver mantle, their sharp outline was firm and vivid against the crystalline background.
“What about the little protégée?” Erskine asked.
“I’ve scarcely seen her during the last few days,” Roger replied. “Madame Vinay’s latest report was that she was restless and didn’t wish to work outdoors. She thought of trying to get a job for her in a flower shop in Nice or Monte Carlo.”
Erskine watched the serving of a mostelle with an air of reverent admiration.
“Do you know, Roger,” he confided, “I shouldn’t be surprised if that girl didn’t turn out damn’ good-looking some day.”
“She’s quite attractive enough now,” Roger said calmly.
“No, but I mean a real tip-topper,” Erskine persisted. “She’s got something about her, I don’t know what it is, that these Frenchmen describe so well in the memoirs of all their famous courtesans. Write a novel about her, old chap. If you’ve got the right touch, you might achieve immortality.”
“I’m off work,” was the rather terse reply. “Look here, Pips, I’ve been thinking—one’s got to clear out of here presently. I’ve been here six months on end and that’s pretty well long enough. I’ll make a bargain with you, if you like. I’ll do as you suggested and go back to England with you, look up a few old pals and get some golf while you settle up your affairs and—what is it you have to do?—stick a coronet on your head and strut across the Palace yard and get turned into a bona fide Lord. I’ll see you through this if you’ll come across to the States with me for a month or so and get back here in say, November or December. How does that appeal to you?”
“It’s a bargain,” Erskine declared emphatically. “Nothing I should like better, old chap. We’ll get back, as you say, about October or November and I’ll have a real season here. I always thought I should like to, if I could get hold of a little of the ready. When do you think you could make a move? The only trouble is, I really ought to get over to London at once, you know. I got off at Marseilles and I was doing a tramp around here to sort of get my bearings, but the lawyers are getting a bit sniffy now. They can’t understand a chap who’s come in for a title and a decent spot of the ready not being anxious to get his hands on it.”
“I’ll start to-morrow, if you like,” Roger promised.
“Capital,” Erskine exclaimed. “We’ll make it the day after, if you don’t mind. Or let’s say the first day we can get seats on the Blue Train; or there may be a steamer calling at Monaco.”
“Agreed.”
They lunched lazily but with excellent appetites. The food was good, the wine and service perfection. Erskine was thoroughly content. Now and then he looked at his friend curiously.
“I should think you’re right in what you say, old chap,” he remarked. “Six months might be enough for any one without a move, and you look a trifle fagged. We’ll have some golf up in Scotland, but by Jove, the one thing I’m going to look forward to is our next season out here.”
They raised their glasses and drank to it. A few thousand miles westward five men, including Paul Viotti, the illustrious brother of the Mayor of La Bastide, were doing very much the same thing.
Down the mountainside, a week later, in snakelike fashion, through the vine-growing country and the stripped flower farms crawled the dilapidated grey motor omnibus which plied between the out-of-the-way hill villages of the Alpes-Maritimes and Nice.
Jeannine, with Madame Vinay on one side and the Curé opposite, felt herself so well guarded that she indulged in a derisive grimace at Monsieur Viotti, the Mayor, who was leaning against his grey stone wall looking steadily seawards. Madame Vinay reproached her charge severely.
“Manners such as that are not for the town,” she declared. “In Nice one must forget such peasant ways.”
Jeannine made no reply. There was something in her eyes, however, and the quiet smile upon her lips which made her guardian just a trifle uncomfortable. More and more every day she was getting to realise that this charge which she had undertaken at Roger’s earnest request was likely to be no sinecure. When they turned the corner, from which was a fine view of the sea below, Jeannine leaned out and her eyes travelled westward. That way his ship had gone—the man whom some day she hoped to make suffer….
Behind them, and some distance above them now, Monsieur Pierre Viotti was also gazing at the sea, a cunning smile of self-satisfaction upon his lips. Halfway across the Atlantic, bound straight for Cherbourg, came the great three-funnelled steamer bearing his famous brother and his friends. He gloated over the thought of their arrival, made plans, indulged in mischievous fancies. What strange instructions these were which he had received. Never mind, they should all be carried out. In time, perhaps, he might become as rich as Paul….
That little devil of a Jeannine! So they were going to try and cheat him out of her. Not a chance. What did Monte Carlo matter? He would be there himself in a few weeks. The leer of the village satyr parted his thick red lips.
CHAPTER III
The season to the success of which Roger and Erskine had drunk on the terrace at Juan-les-Pins, the season which Pierre Viotti had awaited so impatiently, had arrived at last, and on a certain evening early in December the round table in the centre of the Sporting Club bar at Monte Carlo was crowded with a gay little company of habitués. There were the Terence Browns—Franco-Americans and globe-trotters known in every resort in Europe, but finding in Monte Carlo, as Terence Brown frequently confided, their spiritual home. There was Lady Julia Harborough, elderly and autocratic, but exceedingly popular and still one of the leaders of the social life. There was Luke Cheyne, an American banker, a very pleasant fellow and also popular, but with the appearance of a man who was suffering from nerves or dyspepsia. He was talking to Prince Savonarilda, a tall, elegant young Sicilian, who was reported to have enormous, but unprofitable estates in Sicily and who made periodic but mysterious visits to New York. Maggie Saunders, the most sought-after young woman in the Principality, was retailing one of her marvellous stories