"You are staying here? How nice!" she exclaimed, without giving me
time to answer. "We should have arrived last night, but we had an
accident to our carriage--a broken wheel. It was coming down from the
Hospice of St. Bernard, which we had been to visit--oh, not to please
_me_, do not think it. It was the Baron, here. In dim ages his people
and the saint were cousins, though the idea of a saint having cousins
seems actually sacrilegious, doesn't it? I do not love monks, I only
respect them, which is so disagreeable. But the Baron took us. _Dio
mio!_ I have no warm blood left. It was frozen up there. And then,
that our carriage should have broken down at a little place--the wrong
end of nowhere--Bourg St. Something! We had to stop all night. Fancy
me without my maid, who was to meet me here. I do not know if my dress
is not on wrong side before. Later, we all have to go on to Chamounix
and then to Aix-les-Bains. I've taken a villa there for a month. You
_must_ come and see me."
Thus she chattered on as we entered the hotel, and then, suddenly, her
bright eyes fell upon the Boy, who had retired near the stairway.
There he stood, with a book in his hand, and an unwonted colour in his
brown cheeks, glowing red under the strange blue jewels of his eyes.
"What a divine boy!" the Countess half whispered to me, not taking her
gaze from him.
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