This last fancy really did turn me cold, and the nice hot anger which had kept me warm began to ooze out at my fingers and toes.  I thought of my brave new brother, who would fight ten gipsy men to save me if he only knew; and then I wanted to cry.

But that would be the silliest thing I could do.  Soon they would begin to look for me (oh, how furious Lady Turnour would be that I should dare keep her waiting, and at the fuss about a servant!) and if I screamed at the top of my voice maybe some one would hear.

I took a long breath, and gave vent to a blood-curdling shriek which would have made the fortune of an actress on the stage.  Odd!  I couldn’t help thinking of that at the time.  One thinks of queer things at the most inappropriate moments.

It was a glorious howl, but the rock walls seemed to catch it as a battledore catches a shuttlecock, and send it bounding back to me.  I knew then that a cry from those depths would not carry far; and the fear at my heart gave a sharp, rat-like bite.

If I could scramble up!  I thought; and promptly tried.

It looked almost easy; but for me it was impossible.  A very tall woman might have done it, perhaps, but I have only five foot four in my Frenchiest French heels; and the broken-off place was higher than my waist.  With good hand-hold I might have dragged myself up, but the steps above did not come at the right height to give me leverage; and always, though I tried again and again, till my cut hands bled, I couldn’t climb up.  And how silly it seemed, the whole thing!  I was just like a young fly that had come buzzing and bumbling round an ugly old spider’s web, too foolish to know that it was a web.  And even now how lightly the fly’s feet were entangled!  A spring, and I should be out of prison.

    “Oh, the little more, and how much it is! 
    And the little less, and what worlds away!”

The words came and spoke themselves in my ears, as if they were determined to make me cry.

I was desperately frightened and homesick—­homesick even for Lady Turnour.  I should have felt like kissing the hem of her dress if I could only have seen her now—­and I wasn’t able to smile when I thought what a rage she’d be in if I did it.  She would have me sent off to an insane asylum:  but even that would be much gayer and more homelike than an underground cellar in the Ghost City of Les Baux.

Dear old Sir Samuel, with his nice red face!  I almost loved him.  The car seemed like a long-lost aunt.  And as for the chauffeur, my brother—­I found that I dared not think of him.  As in my imagination I saw his eyes, his good dark eyes, clear as a brook, and the lines his brown face took when he thought intently, the tears began running down my cheeks.

“Oh, Jack—­Jack, come and help me!” I called.

That comes of thinking people’s Christian names.  They will pop out of your mouth when you least expect it.  But it mattered little enough now, except that the sound of the name and the echo of it fluttering back to me made my tears feel boiling hot—­hotter than the punch which the Turnours must have finished by this time.