She greeted Chris with a cold, limp hand.  “So nice of you to come.  I hope you won’t be bored.  Ah, Mr. Mordaunt, how is Kellerton Old Park by this time?  I hardly recognized it the day I called.  Rupert tells me you have worked wonders inside as well as out.”

“May I introduce our friend Monsieur Bertrand?” said Chris.

Bertrand brought his heels together and bowed low over the limp hand transferred to his.  Mrs. Pouncefort smiled.

“There is a fellow-countryman of yours here.  Where has he gone?  Ah, there you are!  Captain Rodolphe, let me introduce you to Mrs. Mordaunt and her French friend Monsieur Bertrand.”

She extended one finger to Noel while making the introduction, and at once turned her attention elsewhere.

Chris found herself face to face with a heavy-browed man with an overbearing demeanour and a mouth and chin that sneered perpetually behind a waxed moustache and imperial.  She stared at him for an instant with a bewildered feeling of having seen him somewhere before.  Then, as she returned his bow, a stab of recognition pierced her, and she remembered where.

It flashed into her mind like a picture thrown upon a screen—­that scene upon the sands of Valpre long, long ago, two men fighting with swords that gleamed in the sunlight, a child drawing near with wondering eyes to behold the conflict, and an unruly black terrier scampering to end it!

“I am delighted to make your acquaintance,” declared Captain Rodolphe, “and that of your friend—­M.  Bertrand?”

He uttered the name interrogatively.  Bertrand bowed very slightly, very stiffly, and was instantly erect again.  “That is my name,” he said, as he looked the other straight in the eyes.

Captain Rodolphe was smiling.  “I think we have not met before?  It is always a pleasure to meet a fellow-countryman in a strange land.  That is well understood, is it not, Mrs. Mordaunt?”

His smooth speech brought her back to a situation that was not without serious difficulties, difficulties which he for one was apparently determined to ignore.  Had he recognized her, she wondered?  It seemed probable that he had not.  But then there was nothing in his manner to indicate that he had recognized Bertrand either; yet of that there could be no doubt.

She heard her husband speaking to an acquaintance behind her, and instinctively she began to move away from him.  She did not feel equal to effecting an introduction.  She murmured something conventional about the gardens, and Captain Rodolphe at once accompanied her.

Bertrand walked in silence on her other side till, with an obvious effort, Chris included him in the conversation, when he responded instantly, with that ready ease of manner which had first drawn her to rely upon him.  But though he showed himself quite willing, as ever, to help her, he did not once on his own initiative address the man who had been introduced for his benefit; and Chris, aware of an atmosphere that was highly charged with electricity, notwithstanding its apparent calm, began to cast about for a means of escape therefrom.