By this time I was wondering how long we were to stand here exchanging ideas and persiflage, an animated group of five.  The duke and duchess were charming, but I had had enough of them; I could have spared even good old Dunny; what I wanted, and wanted frantically, was a tete-a-tete; just Esme Falconer and myself.  When I saw two automobiles, packed imposingly with uniformed figures, speed up the drive to the chateau, hope stirred in me.  With suppressed joy,—­I trust it was suppressed,—­I heard the duke exclaim that this was General Le Cazeau, due to visit the hospital with his staff and greet the wounded and bestow on certain lucky beings the reward of their valor in the shape of medals of war.  Obviously, it would have been inexcusable for the master and mistress of Raincy-la-Tour to ignore a visitor so distinguished.  I made no protest whatever as they turned to go.

“But, Miss Falconer,” I implored fervently, “you won’t desert me, will you?  Pity a poor blesse that no general cares two straws to see!”

She smiled, an omen that encouraged me to send Dunny a look of meaning; but my guardian, bless him, had grasped the situation; he was already gone.

Down by the water among the trees there was a marble bench, and with one accord we turned our steps that way.  I emphasized my game leg shamelessly; I positively flourished my crutches.  My battle scars, I guessed from the girl’s kind eyes, appealed to her compassion, and as soon as I suspected this I thanked my stars for that German shell.

“Isn’t there anything,” she said as we sat down, “that you want to ask me?  I think I should be curious if I were you.  After all we have done together there isn’t much beyond my name that you know of me, and you knew that in Jersey City the night the Re d’Italia sailed.”

I shook my head.

“There is just one thing I wanted to know,” I answered cryptically, “and I learned that when your brother-in-law presented me to his wife.  Still, there is nothing on earth you can tell me that I shan’t be glad to listen to.  Say the multiplication table if you like, or recite cook-book recipes.  Anything—­if you’ll only stay!”

Little golden flickers of sunshine came stealing through the branches, dancing, as the girl talked, on her gown and in her hair.  I looked more than I listened.  I had been starved for a sight of her.  And my eyes must have told my thoughts; for a flush crept into her cheeks, and her lashes fluttered, and she looked not at me, but across the swan-dotted lake toward the towers of Raincy-la-Tour.

After all there was little that I had not guessed already; but each detail held its magic, because it was she who spoke.  If she had said “I like oranges and lemons,” the statement would have held me spellbound.  I sat raptly gazing while she told me of herself and her sister Enid; of their life, after the death of their parents, with an aunt whose home was in Pittsburgh, of their travels; and of a winter at Nice, four years ago, when the blue of the skies and seas and the whiteness of the sands and the green of the palms had all seemed created to frame the meeting and the love affair of Enid Falconer and the young nobleman who was now known to the world as the Firefly of France.