Now for the first time the young French officer spoke. He had just given his captive a rough shake and then straightened him up again after a second attempt to get away.
“What shall I do with this fellow, Mademoiselle?” he asked, speaking English with difficulty, but showing extraordinarily white, even teeth under a small, dark moustache. Indeed, Nona decided that she had never seen a more charming and debonair figure than the young French officer, when he finally engaged her attention. He could scarcely have been more than five feet, four inches tall, yet his figure was perfectly built. He was slender, but from the casual fashion in which he gripped the other man, who was several inches taller and far heavier, he must have been extraordinarily strong.
“Oh, let the man go, please,” Nona murmured weakly. “Yes, I know I should have you turn him over to a gendarme and appear against him in court, but really I should hate doing it.”
The girl smiled at the young French officer’s evident disappointment. He made no protest, however; only he gave the man another half-savage shake and said rapidly in French:
“Why aren’t you with the army, you miserable loafer? Your name at once?” Then, when the offender mumbled something indistinguishable: “Report to me at the barracks tomorrow. Oh, I shall find you again, never fear, and it will then be imprisonment for you.”
The moment after the man had run away the French officer stood at attention with his shoulders erect and his feet together. The next he bowed to Nona in an exquisitely correct fashion, as Lieutenant Hume introduced him.
“Miss Davis, my friend, Captain Henri Castaigne, one of the youngest captains in the French army.” Lieutenant Hume then added boyishly: “Tomorrow he is to be presented with the Cross of the Legion of Honor.”
Nona was naturally impressed by such an introduction. But evidently the young officer preferred not having his praises sung to a complete stranger. He pretended not even to have heard his friend’s last remark.
“I will say au revoir,” he returned graciously. “Since you and Lieutenant Hume are old acquaintances, he will prefer to take you to your friends unaccompanied by me.”
He was about to withdraw when Nona interposed.