All the evening Victorine played the tunes the music-master gave her, and once or twice broke into a song of joy; but when I asked her to try the one beginning “Ma cruelle adoree,” she looked green, and said she was tired, and would go to bed.

[Sidenote:  A Game of Billiards]

Then Jean and I had a game of billiards—­we often do now after dinner.  The salle de billard opens out of the salon, and there is a glass like a window over the mantelpiece, so that you can see into the two rooms from each other.  It always reminds me of Alice, in “Through the Looking Glass”—­you expect to find a mirror, and you see into another room.  Godmamma generally accompanies us into the billiard-room, and sits bolt upright in an armchair watching us, but to-night she was too excited to pay us so much attention, and stayed talking to Heloise about the engagement.  Jean seemed nervous and sad, and knocked about the balls aimlessly, not trying a bit.  It is only French billiards, but still one has to play properly, so at last I said that evidently the good news of Victorine’s engagement had so distracted him that he could not pay attention to the game.  He seemed quite startled.  “Ma foi! le jeu!” he said vacantly.  I put down my cue and asked him quite gently what was the matter?

Just then the bangle you gave me last Christmas came undone, so Jean put his cue down too, and offered to fasten it.  It is difficult to do oneself, so I thanked him and handed him my wrist; his hands trembled so he could not do it.  I thought he was ill, and bent over him to see.  Fortunately at that moment we happened to be at the one part of the table which can’t be seen from the other room; because Jean behaved so queerly—­I feel sure Godmamma would have been horrified.  He did not worry about the bangle, but just began kissing my hand; simply dozens of kisses.  I pulled and pulled to try and get it away, but he would not let go, and kept murmuring that at last, at last, he was alone with me!

Now wasn’t it too annoying, Mamma?  I could not call out or make a fuss, because there would have been such a scene, and you would never think a Frenchman could be so strong.  For although I wrenched and dragged I could not get my hand away, and it was making me crosser and crosser every minute.  At last, when he began to kiss my wrist, it tickled so I was afraid I should laugh, and then he would think I was not serious; so I seized my cue with the other hand, and just told Jean in a firm voice that if he did not let go that instant I would break it over his head!  That stopped him!

He pulled himself together and said “Oh! pardon, pardon,” and that he was awfully sorry, and that it was because I was going away soon and he was mad.  And that is what I believe it was, Mamma—­a fit of some kind.  Did you ever hear there was anything odd in the Croixmare family?  Anyway it shows foreigners are not to be trusted, for, even if they haven’t pistols ready to shoot you, they are doing something queer like this.