Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/294

276 to make sure we were right, and then to teuf-teuf up a long, straight avenue, sounding our musical siren as an announcement of our arrival. It was only when I saw the fine old mansion on a terraced plateau, its creamy stone white as pearl in the moonlight, its rows upon rows of windows ablaze, that I remembered my position disagreeably. I was going to stay at this charming place, as a servant, not as a member of the house-party. I would have to eat in the servants' hall—I, Lys d'Angely, whose family had been one of the proudest in France. Why, the name de Roquemartine was as nothing beside ours. It had not even been invented when ours was already old. What would my father say if he could see his daughter arriving thus at a house which would have been too much honoured by a visit from him? I was suddenly ashamed. My boasted sense of humour, about which I am usually such a Pharisee, sulked in a corner and refused to come out to my rescue, though I called upon it. Funny it might be to eat in the kitchens of inns, but I could not feel that it was funny to be relegated to the servants' brigade in the private house of a countryman of my father.

What queerly complicated creatures we little human animals are! An avalanche of love had n't destroyed my hunger. A knife-thrust in my vanity killed it in an instant; and I can't believe this was simply because I 'm female. I should n't be surprised if a man might feel exactly the same—or more so.

"Oh, dear!" I sighed. "It 's going to be horrid here. But"—with a stab of remorse for my self-absorption—"it 's just as bad for you as for me. You don't need to stay in the house, though. You 're a man, and free.