“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.

[Illustration]

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 passed 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.