older by very many
years than her companion. She took the handkerchief and thanked me....

"Somebody--Sterne, isn't it?--says that Englishmen don't travel to see
Englishmen. I don't know whether he'd stand to that in the case of
Englishwomen; Carroll and I didn't.... We were walking rather slowly
along, four abreast across the road; we asked permission to introduce
ourselves, did so, and received some name in return which, strangely
enough, I've entirely forgotten--I only remember that the ladies were
aunt and niece, and lived at Darbisson. They shook their heads when I
mentioned M. Rangon's name and said we were visiting him. They didn't
know him....

"I'd never been in Darbisson before, and I haven't been since, so I don't
know the map of the village very well. But the place isn't very big,
and the house at which we stopped in twenty minutes or so is probably
there yet. It had a large double door--a double door in two senses,
for it was a big _porte-cochere_ with a smaller door inside it, and an
iron grille shutting in the whole. The gentle-voiced old lady had already
taken a key from her reticule and was thanking us again for the little
service of the handkerchief; then, with the little gesture one makes when
one has found oneself on the point of omitting a courtesy, she gave a
little musical laugh.

"'But,' she said with a little movement of invitation, 'one sees so
few compatriots here--if you have the time to come in and smoke a
cigarette ... also the cigarette,' she added, with another rippling
laugh, 'for we have few callers, and live alone--'

"Hastily as I was about to accept, Carroll was before me, professing a
nostalgia for the sound of the English tongue that made his recent
protestations about Provencal a shameless hypocrisy. Persuasive young
rascal, Carroll Was--poor chap ... So the elder lady opened the grille
and the wooden door beyond it, and we entered.

"By the light of the candle which the younger lady took from a bracket
just within the door we saw that we were in a handsome hall or vestibule;
and my wonder that Rangon had made no mention of what was apparently a
considerable establishment was increased by the fact that its tenants
must be known to be English and could be seen to be entirely charming. I
couldn't understand it, and I'm afraid hypotheses rushed into my head
that cast doubts on the Rangons--you know--whether _they_ were all right.
We knew nothing about our young planter, you see.