“Was she pretty?” I couldn’t resist asking.

For an instant he looked bewildered; then he understood.  “Very,” he replied, smiling.  “About the prettiest girl I ever saw.  The description of Nicolete would fit her very well.  ‘The clear face, delicately fine,’ and all that.  But I don’t let my mind dwell much on girls in these days, when I can help it, as you can well imagine.”

“And when you can’t help it?” I wanted to know.

“Oh, when I can’t help it, I feel like a bear with a sore head, and no honey in my hollow tree.”

So that is why he is so disagreeable, sometimes!  He is thinking of the girl of the battlemented garden at Beaucaire.  I shall try and find out all about her; but I don’t know that I shall feel better satisfied when I have.

CHAPTER XVIII

The garden on the battlements at Beaucaire seemed to bring out all that’s best in Lady Turnour, and she was—­for her—­quite radiant when we arrived at Arles.  Not that it was much credit to her to be radiant, when the road had been perfect, and the car had behaved like an angel, as usual; but small favours from small natures are thankfully received; and just as it is a blight upon the spirits of the whole party when her ladyship frowns, so do we cheer up and hope for better things when she smiles.

As we were to spend the night at Arles, and arrived at the quaint, delightful Hotel du Forum before lunch, even the working classes (meaning my alleged brother and myself) could afford that pleasant, leisured feeling which is the right of those more highly placed.

The moment we arrived I knew that I was going to fall in love with Arles, and I hurried to get the unpacking done, so that I might be free to make its acquaintance.  Lady Turnour, still in her garden mood, told me to do as I liked till time to dress her for dinner, but to mind and have no more accidents, as all her frocks hooked at the back.

I am getting to be quite a skilled lady’s-maid now, and am not sure it ought not to be my permanent metier, though I do like to think I was born for better things, and comfort myself by remembering how mother used to say that a lady can always do everything better than a common person if she chooses to try, even menial work, because she puts her intelligence and love for daintiness into all she does.  I unpacked my master’s and mistress’s things with the flashing speed of summer lightning and the neatness of a drill-sergeant.  In a twinkling everything was in exactly the right place, and my conscience felt as if it were growing wings as I flew off to my luncheon.  The whole afternoon free, and the saints only knew what nice, unexpected adventures might happen!  Cousin Catherine used to say, not meaning to be complimentary, that I “attracted adventures as some people seem to attract microbes,” and I could almost hear them buzzing round my head as I ran down-stairs.