Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/185

Rh sent off to an insane asylum: but even that would be much gayer and more homelike than an underground cellar in the Ghost City of Les Baux.

Dear old Sir Samuel, with his nice red face! I almost loved him. The car seemed like a long-lost aunt. And as for the chauffeur, my brother—I found that I dared not think of him. As in my imagination I saw his eyes, his good dark eyes, clear as a brook, and the lines his brown face took when he thought intently, the tears began running down my cheeks.

"Oh, Jack—Jack, come and help me!" I called.

That comes of thinking people's Christian names. They will pop out of your mouth when you least expect it. But it mattered little enough now, except that the sound of the name and the echo of it fluttering back to me made my tears feel boiling hot—hotter than the punch which the Turnours must have finished by this time.

"Jack! Jack!" I called again.

Then I heard a stone rattle up above, somewhere, and a sick horror rushed over me, because of the gipsy men coming back with their wicked old mother.

It was only a very dark gray in the cellar, to my unaccustomed eyes, but suddenly it turned black, with purple edges. I knew then I was going to faint, because I 've done it once or twice before, and things always began by being black with purple edges.