“Is the bearer waiting?” she asked of the footman at the dressing-room door.
“Tell him to keep on waiting, please,” and with an excuse to Piotr--who in his new-born enthusiasm was not minded to let her out of his sight--she hurried to her father’s study.
“Papa,” she said, a little breathlessly, “here’s a note from Laurence. What do you wish me to do about it?”
Régis ran his eye over the penetratingly perfumed sheet, and said nothing.
“Well,” repeated the “Gamin,” “what do you wish me to do, papa?”
“Say yes,” Régis replied, “but understand me, _Chevalier_, you are under no circumstances to be present when she comes to-night. Madame Laurence gives me the impression of having become even something more of a--a difficulty than she was as Mademoiselle Seton! I will for once--yes, for once--accept the responsibility of what she calls a reunion of her intimate friends. We shall see, or, rather, I shall see, what she means by it, but--”
He impulsively drew his daughter down, kissed her very tenderly, and let her go, and, smothering an expletive meant for Laurence, subsided into his arm-chair. After she had gone he sat quite still, plunged in profound thought, a most unusual proceeding for him. The “_Chevalier Gamin_” had never caused him one moment’s anxiety since, when orphaned in her cradle, she had become his dearest and most pressing preoccupation. But just now he suddenly perceived that there might be rocks ahead, such as had never yet disturbed the smooth current of his guardianship of her. Five years ago her return from the convent had been an unmixed and unspeakable joy. Nevertheless, had Basil asked him for her hand then, his great affection and esteem for his kinsman, coupled with a firmly rooted conviction that women can never marry too young, would have won his consent. Indeed, more than once, when seeing them so completely happy in each other’s company, he had deemed it by no means improbable that such a demand might soon be made. But when a very blind Fate ordained otherwise, and the ever-cheerful “Gamin” had remained to fill the old château with the rustle of her flying skirts, the music of her laughter, he had resolutely dismissed his guileless dream, and had been only too well content to keep with him this charming little _compagnon de route_. They had been thenceforth more like brother and sister than father and daughter. Together they had ridden and driven, yachted and swum, fenced and shot, and more lately they had undertaken that long voyage around the world--not as globe-trotters, bent upon engulfing as large a mass of indigestible and subsequently undigested facts and adventures as might be encompassed during a breathless race against time and tide, but as finely equipped _dilettanti_, who take pleasure in lingering over the savor of their every sensation; stopping here and there with album and palette--Marguerite never liked the merciless precision of even the best photograph--pausing a few extra days by the way to hear some celebrated musician, or witness a characteristic folk _fête_; losing themselves in jungles; dallying in wild regions to try their guns at big game; and being received everywhere with _empressement_ and “distinguished consideration”--as the French love to put it. It had been an ideal two years of vagabondage, during which they had more often than not slept under tents, taken their meals _al fresco_, and sat together by camp-fires under the star-sown violet skies of extraordinarily lovely regions; always accompanied by Madame Hortense, as Marguerite’s _dueña_, and by François, Régis’s man, who had been with his master ever since regimental days in Algeria.