But we were shy.  We disliked and shunned strangers.  And when old Gil appeared suddenly, while we were still chewing the melancholy cud of Kit’s announcement, and cried sepulchrally, “M. le Vidame de Bezers to pay his respects to Mademoiselle!”—­Well, there was something like a panic, I confess!

We scrambled to our feet, muttering, “The Wolf!” The entrance at Caylus is by a ramp rising from the gateway to the level of the terrace.  This sunken way is fenced by low walls so that one may not—­when walking on the terrace—­fall into it.  Gil had spoken before his head had well risen to view, and this gave us a moment, just a moment.  Croisette made a rush for the doorway into the house; but failed to gain it, and drew himself up behind a buttress of the tower, his finger on his lip.  I am slow sometimes, and Marie waited for me, so that we had barely got to our legs—­looking, I dare say, awkward and ungainly enough—­ before the Vidame’s shadow fell darkly on the ground at Catherine’s feet.

“Mademoiselle!” he said, advancing to her through the sunshine, and bending over her slender hand with a magnificent grace that was born of his size and manner combined, “I rode in late last night from Toulouse; and I go to-morrow to Paris.  I have but rested and washed off the stains of travel that I may lay my—­ ah!”

He seemed to see us for the first time and negligently broke off in his compliment; raising himself and saluting us.  “Ah,” he continued indolently, “two of the maidens of Caylus, I see.  With an odd pair of hands apiece, unless I am mistaken, Why do you not set them spinning, Mademoiselle?” and he regarded us with that smile which—­with other things as evil—­had made him famous.

Croisette pulled horrible faces behind his back.  We looked hotly at him; but could find nothing to say.

“You grow red!” he went on, pleasantly—­the wretch!—­playing with us as a cat does with mice.  “It offends your dignity, perhaps, that I bid Mademoiselle set you spinning?  I now would spin at Mademoiselle’s bidding, and think it happiness!”

“We are not girls!” I blurted out, with the flush and tremor of a boy’s passion.  “You had not called my godfather, Anne de Montmorenci a girl, M. le Vidame!” For though we counted it a joke among ourselves that we all bore girls’ names, we were young enough to be sensitive about it.

He shrugged his shoulders.  And how he dwarfed us all as he stood there dominating our terrace!  “M. de Montmorenci was a man,” he said scornfully.  “M.  Anne de Caylus is—­”

And the villain deliberately turned his great back upon us, taking his seat on the low wall near Catherine’s chair.  It was clear even to our vanity that he did not think us worth another word—­that we had passed absolutely from his mind.  Madame Claude came waddling out at the same moment, Gil carrying a chair behind her.  And we—­well we slunk away and sat on the other side of the terrace, whence we could still glower at the offender.