Part 20 (1/2)
”No man in his senses would want a _dot_ with you.”
”He wouldn't get much money out of my father, anyhow,” she said. ”He's a poor man who has to work hard for his living; and I love him better than anyone in the whole wide world.”
”I'd like to meet him,” Le Breton remarked.
”So you will, if you behave yourself. He's coming out here very soon.”
”What const.i.tutes behaving myself?” he asked. ”People have never complained of my behaviour so far.”
Pansy knew he was arrogant and overbearing. By his own telling, she guessed he was inclined to be wild. She suspected him of having little or no respect for women, although he had been unfailingly courteous to her.
”I might complain if I had much to do with you, though,” she said.
”It would be refres.h.i.+ng, to say the least,” he remarked, with a slight smile hovering on his lips. ”And what would you complain of especially?”
”You need a lot of reforming in quite a few ways.”
”Tell me, and I'll endeavour to mould myself according to your ideals,”
he said with laughter.
”You know you're very well pleased with yourself as you are.”
”But I'm even better pleased with you, Pansy,” he answered, watching her with glowing gaze.
This Pansy knew quite well. To get off the topic, she touched her horse lightly and broke into a canter. For it seemed to her ”the symptoms” were coming to a head even more rapidly than she had expected.
When the edge of the orange grove was reached, a couple of white-robed men came forward to take their horses--dark men, with hawk-like faces, lean and sun-scorched, who bowed low before her escort with the utmost servility.
”They look like Arabs,” Pansy said.
”They are Arabs; some of my servants from Africa. I generally have half a dozen with me.”
It seemed to Pansy the whole half-dozen were in the grove, ready to wait on her.
No sooner was she settled among the cus.h.i.+ons than one of the servants placed a little box before her, about six inches long and four wide: a costly trifle made of beaten gold, inlaid with flat emeralds and rubies.
”Is it Pandora's box?” she asked, picking it up and examining it with curiosity.
”It and the contents are for you,” Le Breton replied.
She turned the tiny golden key. Inside, three purple pansies reposed on a nest of green moss, smiling up at her with velvety eyes.
”I'll have the contents,” she said. ”The box you can keep for another time.”
With slim white fingers she picked out the pansies and tucked them into her coat.
”Still only a few flowers, Pansy?” he said, annoyed, yet pleased that her friends.h.i.+p was disinterested. ”Suggest something else that you would accept.”
”Breakfast,” she said promptly. ”I'm dying of hunger.”