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Your devoted JANE." The Baroness de Melide was called Jeanne, but she had enthusiastically changed that name for its English version at the period when England was, as it were, first discovered by social France.
A cheery little stewardess had brought them coffee soon after daylight, and had answered a few curt questions put to her by Mademoiselle Brun. "Yes; the yacht was the yacht of the Baron de Melide, and the bete-noire, by the same token, of madame, who hated the sea."
And now, as she drove through the smiling country, with which it was almost impossible to associate the idea of war, she was planning how she could get to the front and work there under the Baron de Melide, and find Lory de Vasselot. "They are somewhere near a little place called Sedan," said the baroness.
Indeed, these things are a mystery, and the wise seek only to obey, and not to ask the reason why. It would be difficult to lay before the English reader the precise social position of the Baroness de Melide. For there are wheels within wheels, or, more properly perhaps, shades within shades, in the social world of Paris, which are quite unsuspected on this side of the Channel.
It happened to be Mademoiselle Brun, who, as a matter of fact, looked no different after a night at sea to what she had looked in the drawing-room of the Baroness de Melide. She was too old or too tough to take her colour from her environments.
There was a rush of patriots to Paris, and another rush of the chicken-hearted to the coast and the frontier. The Baron de Melide telegraphed to the baroness to quit Frejus and go to Italy. And the baroness telegraphed a refusal to do so. Lory de Vasselot fretted as much as one of his buoyant nature could fret under this forced inactivity.
Indeed, it was written to Denise, though it was addressed to the Baronne de Melide. Then he went blithely enough out to fight. For he was quite a simple person, as many soldiers and many horse-lovers are. He was also that which is vaguely called a sportsman, and was ready to take a legitimate risk not only cheerfully, but with joy.
For the baron was a philosopher. When at last they reached the quiet tree-grown station, where even to this day so few trains stop, and so insignificant a business is transacted, they found the Baroness de Melide on the platform awaiting them. She was in black, as were all Frenchwomen at this time.
"Of that of which Lory de Vasselot, and Henri de Melide, and Jane, and all good Frenchmen and Frenchwomen are thinking at this moment of France, and only France," said Mademoiselle Brun; and out of her mouse-like eyes there shone, at that moment, the soul of a man and of a brave man. Her lips quivered for a moment, before she shut them with a snap.
By one of the strokes of good fortune which come but once to the most ardent student of fashion, the Baroness de Melide had taken up horsiness at the very beginning of that estimable craze.
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