Mademoiselle acknowledged the introduction stiffly.  She had no liking for strange men.

But Chris looked at the new-comer with frank interest, forgetful for the moment of her trouble.  His smooth, clean-cut face attracted her.  His grey eyes were the most piercingly direct that she had ever encountered.

“My little cousin, Miss Wyndham,” said Jack.  “Chris, this is the greatest newspaper man of the age.  Join us, Mordaunt, won’t you?  I wish you had come up sooner.  Where were you hiding?”

Mordaunt smiled a little as he took a vacant chair by Chris’s side.  “I have been quite as conspicuous as usual during the whole evening,” he said, “but you were too absorbed to notice me.  Are you enjoying the music, Miss Wyndham, or only watching the crowd?”

Chris did not know quite what to answer, since she had been doing neither, but he passed on with the easy air of a man accustomed to fill in conversational gaps.

“I believe I saw you arrive this evening.  Haven’t you got a small dog with a turned-up nose?  I thought so.  Are you taking him for a holiday?  How do you propose to get him home again?”

That opened her lips, and quite successfully diverted her thoughts.  “He has had his holiday,” she explained, “and we are taking him back.  I don’t know in the least how we shall do it.  Jack will have to manage it somehow.  Can you suggest anything?  The authorities are so horribly strict about dogs, and I couldn’t let him go into quarantine.  He would break his heart long before he came out.”

“A dog of character evidently!” The new acquaintance considered the matter gravely.  “When are you crossing?” he asked.

“To-morrow,” said Jack.  “I’m sorry, Chris, but I came off in a hurry, as matters seemed urgent, and I have to be back by the end of the week.”

“I wonder if you would care to entrust your dog to me,” said Mordaunt.  “I am fairly well known.  I think I could be relied upon with safety to hoodwink the authorities.”

He made the suggestion with a smile that warmed Chris’s desolate heart.  Not till long afterwards did she know that this man had crossed the Channel only that day, and that he proposed to re-cross it on the morrow because of the trouble in a child’s eyes that had moved him to compassion.

They spent the next half-hour in an engrossing discussion as to the best means to be adopted for Cinders’ safe transit, and when Chris went to bed at last she was so full of the scheme that she forgot after all to cry herself to sleep over the thought of her preux chevalier drawing his sand-pictures in solitude.

She dreamed instead that he and the Englishman with the level, grey eyes were fighting a duel that lasted interminably, neither giving ground, till suddenly Bertrand plunged his sword into the earth and abruptly walked away.

She tried to follow him, but could not, for something held her back.  And so presently he passed out of her sight, and turning, she found that the Englishman had gone also, and she was alone.