Of course, there was another alternative. I might have been responsible for the poor lady. But she was as artless as a poor lady could be. Addressing my two friends it was always André and Horace, and instinctively she used the familiar "_tu_." Addressing me she had affrightedly forgotten the pact of Christian names, and it was "Monsieur le Capitaine" and, of course, the "_vous_" which she had never dreamed of changing. Even so poor a French scholar as Lady Auriol could not be misled into such absurd paths of conjecture.
She belonged therefore, in some sort of fashion, to General Lackaday. An elderly man of the world, with his nerves on edge, has no need of wizardry to divine the psychology of such a situation.
Mistress of social forms, Lady Auriol, after sweeping Elodie into her net, caught Horatio Bakkus and through reference to her own hospital experiences during the war, wrung from him the avowal of his concerts for the wounded in Paris.
"How splendid of you! By the way, how do you spell your name? It's an uncommon one."
"I wonder if you have anything to do with an old friend of my fattier, Archdeacon Bakkus?"
"No, really? One of my earliest recollections is his buying a prize boar from my father."
"Just like the dear fellow's prodigality," said Bakkus. "He had a whole Archdeaconry to his hand for nothing. I've lately spent a couple of months with him in Westmorland, so I know."
"How small the world is," said Lady Auriol to Lackaday.
"Have you seen our good friends, the Verity-Stewarts lately?"
She had. They were in perfect health. They were wondering what had become of him.
"And indeed, General," she flashed, "what _has_ become of you?"
"It is not good," said Elodie, in quick anticipation, "that the General should neglect his English friends."
There sounded the note of proprietorship, audible to anybody. Auriol's eyes dwelt for a second on Elodie; then she turned to Lackaday.
Said he, with one of his rare flights into imagery, "I was but a shooting star across the English firmament."
"Encore une étoile qui file, File, file et disparait!"
"Oh no, my dear friend," laughed Bakkus. "He can't persuade us, Lady Auriol, that he is afflicted with the morbidezza of 1830."
"_Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela?_" asked Elodie, sharply.