“Inadvertently I introduced them—­threw them at each others’ heads.  Monsieur Charretier—­Alphonse, as he once asked me to call him!—­told her he was on his way to Cannes, where he heard that a friend of his, whom it was very necessary for him to see, was visiting a Russian Princess.  He had stopped in Avignon, he said, because he was expecting the latest news of the friend, a change of address, perhaps; and—­I don’t know who proposed it, but anyway he arranged to go with Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour to the Palace of the Popes at ten o’clock.  Her ladyship was quite taken with him, and remarked to Sir Samuel that there was nothing so fascinating as a French gentleman of the haut monde.  Also she pronounced his broken English ‘sweet.’  She wondered if he was married, and whether the friend in Cannes was a woman or a man.  Little did she know that her maid could have enlightened her!  Their joining forces here is, as my American friend Pamela would say, ‘the limit.’”

“Don’t worry.  The Palace of the Popes won’t see him to-day,” said the chauffeur.  “He’s gone.  Got a telegram.  Didn’t even wait for letters, but told the manager to forward anything that came for him, Poste Restante, Genoa.”

“Oh, then you—­”

“Acted for you on my own responsibility.  There was nothing else to do, if anything were to be done; and you’d seemed to fall in with my suggestion.  It would have been a pity, I thought, if your visit to Avignon were to be spoiled by a thing like that.”

“Meaning Monsieur Charretier?  I hardly slept last night for dwelling on the pity of it.”

“It’s all right, then?  I haven’t put my foot into it?”

“Your foot!  You’ve put your brains into it.  You said the other night that I had presence of mind.  It was nothing to yours.”

“All’s forgotten and forgiven, then?”

“It’s forgotten that there was anything to forgive.”

“And the ‘motor maid’ business?  You didn’t think it too clumsy?”

“I thought it most ingenious.”

“It wasn’t a lie, you know.  I haven’t a happy talent for lying.  I do, or rather did when I had nothing else on hand, send occasional sketches to a paper.  But the more I look at my ‘motor maid,’ the more I feel I should like to keep her—­in my sketch-book—­if you’re willing I should have her?”

“Then I don’t get my promised five shillings?” I laughed.

“I’ll try and make up the loss to you in some other way.”

“I have you to thank that I didn’t lose my situation.  So the debt is on my side.”

“You owe me the scolding you got.  I oughtn’t to have lured you into the corridor.”

“It was on my business.  And there was no other way.”

“It was my business to have thought of some other way.”

“Are you your sister’s keeper?”

“I wish I—­Look here, mademoiselle ma soeur, I’m all out of repartees.  Perhaps I shall be better after breakfast.  I shall be able to eat, now that I know you’ve forgiven me.”