If Chris would persist in flying about the shore in that wild fashion with her hair loose—­that flaming hair which Mademoiselle considered in itself to be almost indecent—­what could be expected but that some contretemps must of necessity arrive?  It was useless for Chris to protest that it was not her hair that had got her into difficulties, that she had only left it loose to dry it after her bathe, that there had been no one to see—­at least, no one that mattered—­and that the cut on her foot was solely due to the fact that she had taken off her sand-shoes to climb over the rocks.  Mademoiselle only shook her head with pursed lips.  Chris etait mechante—­tres mechante, and no amount of arguing would make her change her opinion upon that point.

So Chris abandoned argument while the worried little Frenchwoman bathed and bandaged her foot anew.  She would not be able to bathe again for at least a week, and this fact was of itself sufficient to depress her into silence.  Yet, after a little, when Mademoiselle was gone, a cheery little tune rose to her lips.  It was not her nature to be depressed for long.

Mademoiselle Gautier would have been something less than human if she had not yielded now and then under the perpetual strain in which, for many days past, she had lived.  She had come to Valpre in charge of Chris and her two young brothers, both of whom had developed diphtheria within a day or two of their arrival.  The children’s father was absent in India; his only sister, upon whom the cares of his family were supposed to rest, was entertaining Royalty, and was far too important a personage in the social world to be spared at short notice.  And so the whole burden had devolved upon poor Mademoiselle Gautier, who had been near her wits’ end with anxiety, but had nobly grappled with her task.

The worst of the business, speaking in a physical sense, was now over.  Both her patients—­Maxwell, who was Chris’s twin, and little Noel, the youngest of the family, aged twelve—­had turned the corner and were progressing towards convalescence.  Over the latter she still had qualms of uneasiness, but the elder boy was rapidly picking up his strength and giving more trouble than he had ever given before in the process.

By inexorable decree Chris was kept away from the two over whom Mademoiselle, aided by a convent nurse, still watched with unremitting care; and it did seem a little hard in the opinion of the harassed Frenchwoman that her one sound charge could not be trusted to conduct herself with circumspection during her days of enforced solitude.  Chris Wyndham, however, had been a tomboy all her life, and she could scarcely be expected to reform at such a juncture.  She was not accustomed to solitude, and her restless spirit chafed after distraction.