"Blessed if you don't see everything!"

"Well, then: what about it?"

"Why, _I_ should say you'd better find a place to put the car under
cover in case it comes on to storm before we're finished--and put up
the top."

"You don't mean to go on in the rain?" Jules protested--yet studiously
in no tone of protest.

"But naturally..."

"How do you get that way? Do you want us all to get soaked to our
skins?"

"My dear Jules!" Mr. Phinuit returned with a winning smile--"I don't
give a tupenny damn if we do." With that he went to join his company;
while Jules, once the other's back was turned, permitted himself, for
the sake of his own respect and the effect upon the assembled audience,
the luxury of a shrug that outrivalled words in expression of his
personal opinion of the madness that contemplated further travel on
such a night as this promised to be.

Then, like the well-trained servant that he was not, he meshed gears
silently and swung the car away to seek shelter, taking with him the
sympathy as well as the wonder of the one witness of this bit of
by-play who had been able to understand the tongue in which it was
couched; and who, knowing too well what rain in those hills could mean,
was beginning to regret that his invitation to the chateau had not been
for another night.

As for the somewhat unusual tone of the passage to which he had just
listened, his nimble wits could invent half a dozen plausible
explanations. It was quite possible, indeed when one judged Mr. Phinuit
by his sobriety in contrast with the gaiety of the others it seemed
quite plausible, that he was equally with Jules a paid employee of
those ostensible nouveaux riches: and that the two, the chauffeur and
the courier (or whatever Mr. Phinuit was in his subordinate social
rating) were accustomed to amuse themselves by indulging in reciprocal
abuse.

But what Duchemin could by no means fathom was the reason why Phinuit
should choose, and how he should rule the choice of his party, in the
face of such threatening weather, to stop in Nant for an early
dinner--with Millau only an hour away and the chances fair that before
the storm broke the automobile would reach the latter city with its
superior hotel and restaurant accommodations.

But it was after all none of the business of Andre Duchemin. He lighted
another cigarette, observing the group of strangers in Nant with an
open inquisitiveness wholly Gallic, therefore inconspicuous. The entire