“Oh, but he wasn’t always dreadful,” she interposed quickly.  “He was a fascinating sort of person, quite charming and good-looking, when she ran away with him, though he was horribly dissipated even then.  He always had been that.  Of course she thought she’d be able to straighten him out—­poor girl!  She tried, for three years—­three years it hurts one to think of!  You see it must have been something very like a ’grand passion’ to hold her through a pain three years long.”

“Or tremendous pride,” said I.  “Women make an odd world of it for the rest of us.  There was good old George, as true and straight a man as ever lived—­”

“And she took the other!  Yes.”  George’s sister laughed sorrowfully.

“But George and she have both survived the mistake,” I went on with confidence.  “Her tragedy must have taught her some important differences.  Haven’t you a notion she’ll be tremendously glad to see him when he comes back from America?”

“Ah, I do hope so!” she cried.  “You see, I’m fearing that he hopes so too—­to the degree of counting on it.”

“You don’t count on it yourself?”

She shook her head.  “With any other woman I should.”

“Why not with Mrs. Harman?”

“Cousin Louise has her ways,” said Miss Elizabeth slowly, and, whether she could not further explain her doubts, or whether she would not, that was all I got out of her on the subject at the time.  I asked one or two more questions, but my companion merely shook her head again, alluding vaguely to her cousin’s “ways.”  Then she brightened suddenly, and inquired when I would have my things sent up to the chateau from the inn.

At the risk of a misunderstanding which I felt I could ill afford, I resisted her kind hospitality, and the outcome of it was that there should be a kind of armistice, to begin with my dining at the chateau that evening.  Thereupon she mounted to the saddle, a bit of gymnastics for which she declined my assistance, and looked down upon me from a great height.

“Did anybody ever tell you,” was her surprising inquiry, “that you are the queerest man of these times?”

“No,” I answered.  “Don’t you think you’re a queerer woman?”

“Footle!” she cried scornfully.  “Be off to your woods and your woodscaping!”

The bay horse departed at a smart gait, not, I was glad to see, a parkish trot—­Miss Elizabeth wisely set limits to her sacrifices to Mode—­and she was far down the road before I had passed the outer fringe of trees.

My work was accomplished after a fashion more or less desultory that day; I had many absent moments, was restless, and walked more than I painted.  Oliver Saffron did not join me in the late afternoon; nor did the echo of distant yodelling bespeak any effort on his part to find me.  So I gave him up, and returned to the inn earlier than usual.

While dressing I sent word to Professor Keredec that I should not be able to join him at dinner that evening; and it is to be recorded that Glouglou carried the message for me.  Amedee did not appear, from which it may be inferred that our maitre d’hotel was subject to lucid intervals.  Certainly his present shyness indicated an intelligence of no low order.