The chauffeur raised his eyebrows, but obeyed in silence, leaving the motor hard at work, the automobile panting as impatiently to be off as if “she” suffered with Lady Turnour.

No sooner was the tall, leather-clad figure out of sight than a crowd of small boys and youths pressed boldly round the handsome car.  Her splendour was her undoing, for a plain, every-day sort of automobile might have failed to attract.

Laughing, jabbering patois, a dozen young imps forced their audacious attentions on the unprotected azure beauty.  What was I, that I could defend her, left there as helpless as she, while her great heart throbbed under me?

It was easy to say “Allez-vous en—­va!” and I said it, not once, but again and again, each time more emphatically than before.  Nobody paid the slightest attention, however, except, perhaps to find an extra spice of pleasure in tormenting me.  If I had been a yapping miniature lap-dog, with teeth only pour faire rire, I could not have been treated with greater disdain by the crowd.  I glanced hastily round to see if Sir Samuel had not taken alarm; but, sitting beside his wife in the big crystal cage, he seemed blissfully unconscious of danger to his splendid Aigle.  Instead, the couple looked rather pleased than otherwise to be a centre of attraction.

“Perhaps,” I thought, “they’re right, and these young wretches can work no real harm to the car.  They ought to know better than I—­”

But they didn’t; for before the thought could spin itself out in my mind, a gypsy-eyed little fiend of twelve or thirteen made a spring at the driver’s seat.  With a yelp of mischievous glee he proved his daring to his comrades by snatching at the starting-lever.  He was quick as a flash of summer lightning, but if I hadn’t been quicker, the big car might have leaped into life, and run amuck through the most crowded street in busy Marseilles.  I felt myself go cold and hot, horribly uncertain whether my interference might work harm or good, but before I quite knew what I did, I had sent the boy flying with a sounding box on the ear.

He squealed as he sprawled backward, and I stood up, ready for battle, my fingers tingling, my heart pounding.  The imp was up again, in half a breath, pushed forward by his friends to take revenge, and I could hear Sir Samuel or her ladyship wrestling vainly with the window behind me.  What would have happened next I can’t tell, except that I was in a mood to fight for our car till the death, even if knives flashed out; and I think I was gasping “Police!  Police!” but at that instant Mr. Jack Dane hurled himself like a catapult from the hotel.  He dashed the weedy youths out of his way like ninepins, jumped to his seat, and the car and the car’s occupants were safe.

“You are a trump, Miss d’Angely,” said he, as we boomed away from the hotel, scattering the crowd before us as an eddy of wind scatters autumn leaves.  “You did just the right thing at just the right time.  It was all my fault.  I oughtn’t to have left the motor going.”