ll out of myself, or rather out of Brown.

"But is it possible, my dear Miss Randolph," I was mad enough to exclaim
(I, who had never before risen above the level of a humble "miss"),
"that you and Miss Kedison believe in that flimsy excuse? The
castles----"

"Yes, the _castles_," she repeated, very properly taking the word out of
my mouth; and the worst of it was that she was completely right in
setting me in my place, setting me down hard. "I am surprised at you,
Brown. You are a splendid mechanic, and--and you have travelled and read
such a lot that you are a very good guide too, and because I think we're
lucky to have got you I treat you quite differently from an ordinary
_chauffeur_." (If you could have heard that "ordinary" as she said it!
There was hope in it in the midst of humiliation; but I dared not let a
gleam dart from my respectful eye.) "Still, you must remember, please,
that you are engaged for certain things and not for others. If I need a
protector besides Aunt Mary, I may tell you."

I could have burst into unholy laughter to hear the poor child; but I
bottled it up, and only ventured to say, with a kind of soapy meekness
which I hoped might lather over the real presumption, "I beg your
pardon, miss, and I hope you won't be offended; but, as you say, I have
travelled a little, and I know something of Frenchmen. They don't always
understand American young ladies as well as----"

"'As well as Englishmen,' I suppose you were going to say," snapped she,
that dimpled chin of hers suddenly seeming to assume a national
squareness I'd never observed. "But Monsieur Talleyrand, though a
Frenchman, is a gentleman."

That's what I had to swallow, my boy. The inference was that a French
gentleman was, at worst, a cut above an English mechanic, and with that
she turned her back on me and ran upstairs with such a rustling of
unseen silk things as made me feel her very petticoats were bristling
with indignation.

I could have shaken the girl. And the things I said to myself as I
stalked over to my own hotel won't bear repeating; they might set the
mail-bag an fire; combustibles aren't allowed in the post, I believe. I
swore that (among other things) one such snubbing was enough. If Miss
Randolph wanted to get herself in the devil of a scrape, she could do
it, but I wasn't going to stand by and look complacently on while that
smirking Beast made fools of her and her aunt. I'd clear out to-morrow;
didn't care a