"Did you say you were miserable last night?" she inquired with flattering eagerness.

"Yes. Awfully miserable."

"Poor Lord Lane! I haven't understood yet exactly why you suddenly gave up your walking tour, and got the idea of going on by rail. I thought from your letters you were having such a good time, that we could hardly bribe you to desert--your party and come with us, even at Gren.o.ble."

"My party deserted me, and that was the end of my 'good time,'" I replied, charmed with Molly's conception of the role of a "quiet kitten" whose existence was to be forgotten. As if any man could ever forget hers!

"What, your nice Joseph and his Finois?" she inquired.

"When I speak of 'my party' I refer particularly to the boy I wrote you about," I returned, far from averse to being drawn out on the subject of my troubles, though I had resolved, were I not intimately questioned, to let them prey upon my damask cheek.

"Oh, yes, that wonderful American boy. Did he keep right on being wonderful all the time, or did he turn out disappointing in the end?"

"Disappointing!" I echoed. "No; rather the other way round. He was always surprising me with new qualities. I never saw anyone like him."

"Ah, perhaps that's because you never knew other American boys. I dare say if I'd met him I shouldn't have found him so remarkable."

"Yes, you would," I protested. "There could be no two opinions about it."

"Is he good-looking?"

"Extraordinarily. Such eyes as his are wasted on a boy--or would be on any other boy. If he'd been a girl, he would have been one for a man to fall head over ears in love with."

"You're enthusiastic! Hasn't he got any sisters?"

"He has one, who is supposed to be like him. I was promised--or partly promised--to meet her in Monte Carlo, at the end of our journey, where the Boy expected her to join him."

"Oh, has he been called away by her?"

"I don't think so."

"I fancied that might have been why he left you."

"I don't know what his reason was, but I have faith enough in the little chap to be sure it was a _good one_."

"Sure you didn't bore each other?"

"If you had ever seen that boy, you'd know that the word 'bore' would perish in his presence like a microbe in hot water. As for me--I don't believe I bored him. He did say once that we would part when we came to the 'turnstile,' meaning the point of mutual boredom, but I can't believe the turnstile was in his sight. I think that his resolution to go was sudden and unexpected."

"He must have been an interesting boy, and you ought to be grateful to Fate for sending him your way because apparently he gave you no time for brooding on the past."

"The past? Oh, by Jove, I couldn't think what you meant for a second.

You have a right to say 'I told you so,' Mrs. Winston. There was nothing in all that, you know, except a little wounded vanity; and you know, _you_ are really the Fate I have to thank for finding it out so soon."

"What _do_ you mean?" exclaimed Molly, almost as if she were frightened. "I did nothing at all. I----"

"You took me away with you and Jack. The rest followed."

"Oh, _that_. I didn't understand. Well, as we shall get you down to Monte Carlo soon, you will meet your boy again."

"I wish I could be sure."

"I thought you said it was an engagement."

"Only conditional. Besides, had we walked, we should have been weeks on the way. I wonder you don't laugh in my face, Mrs. Winston, but you'd understand if you could have met the Boy."

"I supposed Jack was your best friend," complained Molly.

"So he is. But this is different. I'm going to look for the Boy at Monte Carlo. What I'm hoping is, that after all he may keep the half-engagement he made to meet me there."

"When?"

"On the night after my arrival for a dinner at the Hotel de Paris, to be given in honour of him and his sister."

"You think he will?"

"It's worth going on the chance."

"You are the right kind of friend," said Molly, "and you deserve to be rewarded, doesn't he, Jack?"

"Yes," Jack flung over his shoulder as he drove; "and I shall swear a vendetta against everybody concerned, if he isn't."

This did not strike me as a particularly brilliant remark, but Molly seemed to find it witty, for she laughed merrily, with a certain impish ring in her glee, reminiscent of the Little Pal in some moods.

Evidently she had exhausted her long list of questions, for, laughing still, she twisted her slim body half round in the tonneau, turning a shoulder upon us. I took this as a signal that Mercedes was now to have her share of attention, and tactfully bestowed mine on Jack.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XXVIII

The World without the Boy

"A ... somewhat headlong carriage."

--R.L. STEVENSON.

Though I had given Molly eyes and ears during her long catechism, I had been vaguely aware, nevertheless, that on leaving the Hotel de France we had crossed a bridge over the almost dry and pebbly bed of the insignificant Leysse; that we had pa.s.sed the stately elephants, and a robust marble lady typifying France in the act of receiving on her breast a slender Savoie; that we had caught a last glimpse of the chateau, and were spinning along a well-kept road, cheek by jowl with the railway to Lyons.

From a high mountain on our left, the silver Cascade de Coux fell vertically, like a white horse's tail; and I smiled to see, as we flashed by, a little house which honoured a valiant foe against whom I had fought, with the name of the Cafe de Boers.

Up and up mounted our road, cresting green billows of rolling mountain land. We were running towards the boundary of Savoie, into Dauphine, a country which I had never seen. The Boy and I had talked of entering it together and visiting its Seven Marvels, the very possession of which made it seem in our eyes alluringly mediaeval. Had he been my companion still, we would have been travelling some hidden side-path, where doubtless Joseph and Innocentina, chaperoned by _les animaux_, were happily straying at this moment. I could almost hear the donkey-girl's mechanically constant, warning cry, "f.a.n.n.y-anny, f.a.n.n.y-anny! Souris-ouris!" like a low undertone of accompaniment to the thrum of the motor.

The fancied sound smote me with homesickness, and to coax my mind from the disappointment which still rankled, I asked Jack when he would let me try my hand at driving.

"Not here," said he with a smile, which was instantly explained by an abrupt plunge from the top of a long hill down into a cutting between lichen-scaled rocks, tracing with our "pneus" as we went a series of giddy zig-zags. We had hardly twisted one way when lo! the time had come to twist in the opposite direction, and nowhere had we a radius of more than twenty yards in which to perform our tricks.

"I couldn't have done that as well as you did it, I confess," said I, with becoming modesty.