“You can’t, you shan’t stop in the house!” I gasped.  “Leave me and the luggage.  Drive the car to the nearest village.”

“I don’t want to leave you.  Can’t you understand that?” he said.  “I’m not sacrificing myself.”

We were at the door.  We had been heard.  If I had suddenly been endowed with the eloquence of Demosthenes, the gift would have come too late.  The door was thrown open, not by servants, but by a merry, curious crowd of ladies and gentlemen, anxious to see the arrival of the belated, no doubt much talked of, automobile.  Light streamed out from a great hall, which seemed, at first glance, to be half full of people in evening dress, girls and young men, gay and laughing.  Everybody was talking at the same time, chattering both English and French, nobody listening to anybody else, all intent on having a glimpse of the car.  I believe they were disappointed not to see it battered by some accident; sensations are so dear to the hearts of idle ones.

Sir Samuel Turnour came out, with two young men and a couple of girls, while Lady Turnour, afraid of the cold, remained on the threshold in a group of other women among whom she was violently conspicuous by the blazing of her jewels.  The others were all in dinner dress, with very few jewels.  She had attempted to atone for her blouse and short skirt by putting on all her diamonds and a rope or two of pearls.  Poor woman!  I knew her capable of much.  I had not supposed her capable of this.

Instinct told me that one of the young men with Sir Samuel was the Marquis de Roquemartine, and I trembled with physical dread, as if under a lifted lash, of his greeting to Jack.  But the pince-nez over prominent, near-sighted eyes, gave me hope that my chauffeur might be spared an unpleasant ordeal.  Joy! the Marquis did not appear to recognize him, and neither did the Marquise, if she were one of the young women who had run out to the car.  Maybe, if he could escape recognition now, he might escape altogether.  Once swept away among the flotsam and jetsam below stairs, he would be both out of sight and out of mind.  I did not care about myself now, only for him, and I was beginning to cheer up a little, when I noticed that the other young man was gazing at the chauffeur very intently.

His flushed face, and small fair moustache, his light eyes and hair, looked as English as the Marquis’ short, pointed chestnut beard and sleek hair en brosse, looked French.  “Bertie!” I said to myself, flashing a glance at him from under my veil.

Bertie, if Bertie it was, did not speak.  He simply stared, mechanically pulling an end of his tiny moustache, while Sir Samuel talked.  But he was so much interested in his stepfather’s chauffeur that when the really very pretty girl near him spoke, over his shoulder, he did not hear.

“Well, we began to think you’d tumbled over a precipice!” exclaimed Sir Samuel, with the jovial loudness that comes to men of his age from good champagne or the rich red wines of Southern France.