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“They must be atrocious—abominable!” snapped poor Marguerite, her dark eyebrows meeting in a furious frown above her exquisitely arched little nose.

“N-no, not that; merely very tiresome and authoritative—insular to a terrible extent! He, as I have often told you, is a yachtsman above, before, after, and during everything else; by no means unkind, but as stubborn as a whole troop of mules. She—well, she’s Elizabethan; not kindly nor good-looking, but worse! Brick-red morally and physically, without any luster or brilliancy, fond of absolute power, narrow-minded, and—oh, well, quite unendurable.”

“O-o-o-o-h!” gasped Marguerite. “Oh ... o ... o ... o ... h!”

“I am their ward,” Laurence continued. “They are my omnipotent guardians, and I can never hope to get rid of them, for I am a beggar, living on their rather acid bounty. Do you understand, petit ‘Gamin’?”

No, petit “Gamin” did not understand. There was something askew in that speech, somehow, something that grated upon her, though just what it was she could not have told. She therefore remained silent, her eyes fixed upon two yellow butterflies chasing each other round and round a clump of blue hortensias artistically grouped at the corner of the cloister beneath the leaden rain-spout, whose frequent libations kept those gorgeous globes of bloom from reverting to their original creamy pink.