and feelings as may concern her.  Besides, it is not soothing to one’s vanity to try—­well, yes, I may as well confess that!—­to try and please a man, yet to know you’ve failed after days of association so constant and intimate that hours are equal to the same number of months in an ordinary acquaintance.  Now, after thinking I’d made the discovery that he really had found me attractive, it was a shock to be spoken to in this way.

“Oh, you are cross!” I exclaimed, still poking about in the hole under the stairway.

“I’m not cross,” he said, “but if I were, you’d deserve it, because you know you’ve been foolish.  And if you don’t know, you ought to, so that you may be wiser next time.  The idea of a sensible young woman chumming up in a lonely cave, with a dirty old gipsy certain to be a thief, if not worse, letting her tell fortunes, and then falling into a trap like this.  I wouldn’t have believed it of you!”

“I think you’re perfectly horrid,” said I.  “I wish you had let the guide find me.  He would have done it just as well, and been much more polite.”

“Doubtless he would have been more polite, but he isn’t as young, and might have had trouble in getting you out.  There! that’s my last match, and you mustn’t waste any more time looking for treasure which you won’t find.”

“Which I have found!” I announced.  “I’ve got something more—­away at the back of the hole.  Not that you deserve to see it!”

However, I held up my hand in its torn, bloodstained glove, with two silver pieces displayed on the palm.

“A child’s hidey-hole, I suppose,” he said without showing as much interest as the occasion warranted.  “Otherwise there would be something more valuable.  A young servant of the Grimaldis, perhaps; these coins are all of the same period—­of no great value as antiques, I’m afraid.”

“They’re of value to me,” I retorted.  “They’ll bring me luck.”  I would of course have given him one, if he hadn’t been so disagreeable; but now I felt that he shouldn’t have anything of mine if he were starving.

“You are very superstitious, among other childlike qualities,” he replied, laughing.  So that was what he thought of me, and that was why he had called me “child”!  It was all spoiled now, from the beginning; and the guide might as well have found me, as I had said, without quite meaning it at the time.

“If you don’t like lucky things, you can throw away my St. Christopher,” I said, coldly.  “You must have thought it very silly.”

“I thought it extremely kind of you to give it, and I’ve no intention of throwing it away, or parting with it,” said he.  “Now, are you ready?”

“Yes,” I snapped.

In an instant he had me by the waist between two hands which felt strong as steel buckles, and swung me up like a feather on to the first step of the broken stairs.  Then, in another second, he was at my side, supporting me to the top without a word, except a muttered “Don’t be childish!” when I would have pushed away his arm.