Madame St. Lo

"I say, Madame, I have come to you!" he repeated. "And you do not seem
pleased!"

She came forward a step and looked at him still more oddly.

"Oh yes," she said. "I am pleased, M. de Tignonville. It is what I
intended. But tell me how you have fared. You are not hurt?"

"Not a hair!" he cried boastfully. And he told her in a dozen windy
sentences of the adventure of the haycart and his narrow escape. He
wound up with a foolish meaningless laugh.

"Then you have not eaten for thirty-six hours?" she said. And when he
did not answer, "I understand," she continued, nodding and speaking as to
a child. And she rang a silver handbell and gave an order.

She addressed the servant in her usual tone, but to Tignonville's ear her
voice seemed to fall to a whisper. Her figure--she was small and fairy-
like--began to sway before him; and then in a moment, as it seemed to
him, she was gone, and he was seated at a table, his trembling fingers
grasping a cup of wine which the elderly servant who had admitted him was
holding to his lips. On the table before him were a spit of partridges
and a cake of white bread. When he had swallowed a second mouthful of
wine--which cleared his eyes as by magic--the man urged him to eat. And
he fell to with an appetite that grew as he ate.

By-and-by, feeling himself again, he became aware that two of Madame's
women were peering at him through the open doorway. He looked that way
and they fled giggling into the court; but in a moment they were back
again, and the sound of their tittering drew his eyes anew to the door.
It was the custom of the day for ladies of rank to wait on their
favourites at table; and he wondered if Madame were with them, and why
she did not come and serve him herself.