I laughed so much that I shook my feet out of time with the music.

“Did you treat her like a cook, too?” I gurgled.  “Ask her to give you her favourite recipe for soup?”

“Heaven forbid, no.  I treated her like a countess.  One would a cook, you know.  It was afterward I got into the hot water.  I popped her down in a seat when we’d scrambled through a turn or two of the dance, and that was all right; but instead of stoppin’ where she was put, she must have stood up with some other poor chap when my back was turned, and been plamped down somewhere else.  Anyhow, I danced the end of the waltz with the Marquise de Roquemartine, when she’d finished doin’ the polite to the butler, and when we sat down to breathe at last, for the sake of somethin’ to say I asked if the fat lady in yellow was her own cook, or a visitor’s cook.  Anyhow, I was certain of the cook:  fancied myself on spottin’ a cook anywhere.  Well, the marquise giggled ‘Take care!’ and nearly had a fit.  And if there wasn’t my late partner close to my shoulder.  ‘That’s Lady Turnour, one of my guests,’ said the marquise.  Little witch, she looked more pleased than shocked; but ’pon my honour, you could have knocked me down with a feather.  I hope the good lady didn’t hear, but my friends tell me I talk as if I were yellin’ through a megaphone, so I’m afraid she got the news.”

“What did you do?” I gasped.

“Do?  I jumped up as if I’d been shot, and trotted over to ask you to dance.  But I expect it will get about.”

Now I knew why Lady Turnour had glared.  Poor woman!  I was really sorry for her—­on this, her happy night!

CHAPTER XXIX

“It never rains, but it pours, after dry weather,” says Pamela de Nesle.  And so it was for the Turnour family.  They had had their run of luck, and everything determinedly went wrong for them that night.

For her ladyship, there was the dreadful douche of the admiral’s mistake, and the Marquise de Roquemartine’s coming to hear of it.  (Wicked little witch, I’m sure she couldn’t resist telling the story to everyone!) For Bertie, the blow of an announcement, before the ball was over, that Miss Nelson was going to marry the Duc de Divonne (she went out of the room to get engaged to him).  For Sir Samuel, a telegram from his London solicitors advising him to hurry home and straighten out some annoying business tangle.

After all, however, I doubt that the telegram ought to be classed among disasters, as it gave the family a good excuse to escape without delay from the chateau which they had so much wished to enter.

Lady Turnour had hysterics in her bedroom, having retired early on account of a “headache.”  She pretended that her rage was caused by a rent in her golden train, made by “that clumsy Admiral Gray who came over with the Frasers, and had the impudence to almost force me to dance with him—­gouty old horror!” But I know it was the rent in her vanity, not her dress, which made her gurgle, and wail, and choke, until frightened Sir Samuel patted her on the back, and she stopped short, to scold him.