I said. "But let's look for that rosary. Have you any matches?"
"Plenty." He took out a match-case, and held a wax vesta for me to peer about in the neighbourhood of the broken stairway.
"Here's something glittering!" I exclaimed, just as I had been about to give up the search in vain. "She said there was a silver crucifix."
I slipped my fingers into a crack where the rock had been split in breaking off the lower steps. A small, bright thing was there, almost buried in débris, but I could not get my fingers in deep enough to dislodge it. Impatiently I pulled out a hat-pin, and worked until I had unearthed—not the rosary, but a silver coin.
"Somebody else has been down here, dropping money," I said, handing the piece up for Mr. Dane to examine.
"Then it was a long time ago," he replied, "for the coin has the head of Louis XIII. on it."
"Oh, then she was right!" I cried. "I can find lost treasure. I'm going to look for more. I believe that piece must have fallen out of a hole I've found here, which goes back ever so far into the rock. I can get my arm in nearly to the elbow."
"Who was 'right'?" my brother wanted to know.
"The gipsy. She told my fortune. That was why I didn't refuse to look for her rosary."
"I should have thought a child would have known better," he remarked, scornfully; and his tone hurt my sensitiveness the more because his voice had been so anxious and his words so kind when I was fainting. He had called me "child" and "little girl." I remembered well, and the words had been saying themselves over in my mind ever since. I rather thought that they betrayed a secret—that perhaps he had been getting to care for me a little. That idea pleased me, because he had been abrupt sometimes, and I hadn't known what to make of him. Every girl owes it to herself to understand a man thoroughly—at least, as much of his character and feelings as may concern her. Besides, it is not soothing to one's vanity to try—well, yes, I may as well confess that!—to try and please a man, yet to know you've failed after days of association so constant and intimate that hours are equal to the same number of months in an ordinary acquaintance. Now, after thinking I'd made the discovery that he really had found me attractive, it was a shock to be spoken to in this way.
"Oh, you are cross!" I exclaimed, still poking about in the hole under the stairway.
"I'm not cross," he said, "but if I were, you'd deserve it, because you know you've been foolish. And if you don't know, you ought to, so that you may be wiser next time. The idea of a sensible young woman chumming up in a lonely cave, with a dirty old gipsy certain to be a thief, if not worse, letting her tell fortunes, and then falling into a trap like this. I wouldn't have believed it of you!"
"I think you're perfectly horrid," said I. "I wish you had let the guide find me. He would have done it just as well, and been much more polite."
"Doubtless he would have been more polite, but he isn't as young, and might have had trouble in getting you out. There! that's my last match, and you mustn't waste any more time looking for treasure which you won't find."
"Which I have found!" I announced. "I've got something more—away at the back of the hole. Not that you deserve to see it!"
However, I held up my hand in its torn, bloodstained glove, with two silver pieces displayed on the palm.
"A child's hidey-hole, I suppose," he said without showing as much interest as the occasion warranted. "Otherwise there would be something more valuable. A young servant of the Grimaldis, perhaps; these coins are all of the same period—of no great value as antiques, I'm afraid."
"They're of value to me," I retorted. "They'll bring me luck." I would of course have given him one, if he hadn't been so disagreeable; but now I felt that he shouldn't have anything of mine if he were starving.
"You are very superstitious, among other childlike qualities," he replied, laughing. So that was what he thought of me, and that was why he had called me "child"! It was all spoiled now, from the beginning; and the guide might as well have found me, as I had said, without quite meaning it at the time.
"If you don't like lucky things, you can throw away my St. Christopher," I said, coldly. "You must have thought it very silly."
"I thought it extremely kind of you to give it, and I've no intention of throwing it away, or parting with it," said he. "Now, are you ready?"
"Yes," I snapped.
In an instant he had me by the waist between two hands which felt strong as steel buckles, and swung me up like a feather on to the first step of the broken stairs. Then, in another second, he was at my side, supporting me to the top without a word, except a muttered "Don't be childish!" when I would have pushed away his arm.
Strange to say, I forgot Lady Turnour and Sir Samuel until we saw the guide, to whom long ago Mr. Dane had called up a reassuring "Tout va bien!" Then, suddenly, the awful truth sprang into my mind. All this time they had been waiting for me! What would they say? What would they do?
In my horror, I even forgot my righteous anger with the chauffeur. "Oh!" I gasped. "The Turnours!"
Then Mr. Dane spoke kindly again. "Don't worry," he said. "It's all right. They've gone on."
"In the car?" I cried.
"No. Sir Samuel can't drive the car. And as Lady Turnour thought she had a chill, rather than wait for me to find you they took a carriage which was here, and drove down to St. Remy. They'll go on by rail to Avignon, and—"
"There must have been a dreadful row!" I groaned.
"Not at all. You're not to worry. Lady Turnour behaved like a cad, as usual, but what can you expect? Sir Samuel did the best he could. He would have liked to wait, but if he'd insisted she would have had hysterics."
"How came there to be a carriage here?" I asked the guide.
"The gentleman paid three young men who had driven up in it a good sum to get it for himself," he explained, "and they are walking down. They are of Germany."
"Was it a long time?" I went on. "Oh, it must have been. It's nearly dark now, except for the moonlight."
"It is perhaps an hour altogether since mademoiselle separated herself from the others," the guide admitted. "But they have been gone for more than half that time. They did not delay long, after the little dispute with monsieur about the car."
"Oh, there was a dispute!" I caught him up, wheeling upon the chauffeur. "You must tell me."
"It was nothing much," he said, still very kindly, "and it was her ladyship's fault, of course. If you were plain and elderly she'd have more patience; but as it is, you've seen how quick she is to scold; so, of course, she was angry when she'd finished her grog and you didn't turn up."
"What did she say," I asked.
He laughed. "She was quite irrelevant."
"I must know!"
"Well, she seemed to lay most of the blame on the colour of your hair and eyelashes."
"She said—"
"What could be expected of a girl that dyed her hair yellow and her eyelashes black?"
"Horrid woman! You don't believe I do, do you?"
"I must say it hadn't occurred to me to think of it."
Then I remembered how angry I was with him, and didn't pursue that subject, but turned again to the other. However, I made a mental note that there was one more thing to punish him for when I got the chance.
"What else did she say?"
"She began to turn purple when Sir Samuel would have defended you, and said she wouldn't stand your taking such liberties. That it was monstrous, and a few other things, to be kept freezing on mountains by one's domestics, and that she should be ill if she waited. Sir Samuel persuaded