The party of men whom we had left in the verandah were still seated there when we returned, Monsieur de Q. looking more than ever like John Bright as he held forth in eloquent periods on the treatment of influenza, which, it appeared, was raging among his vintagers. Madame de Q. had not accompanied the walking expedition, and had retired, so her husband informed us, with a bad headache, the result of driving in the sun. We guiltily murmured condolences, but as a few minutes later we all sat down round the polished oak table in the dining-room, it appeared to us that the party seemed in no way to suffer from the absence of its hostess. Tea was served in a rather peculiar manner. Empty teacups were placed in front of the guests; one sister went round with the teapot, and the other followed with liqueurs and cold boiled milk, while a variety of little cakes and piled-up dishes of fruit circulated in her wake. The tea was hot and bitter with strength; the certain prospect of indigestion depressed us, and unfitted us to cope with the not unreasonable curiosity of the other visitors as to us and our, to them, astonishing mission in the Médoc. We felt that our vocabulary was being tried rather too high, and on the whole we were glad that we had to catch a train back to Libourne at six, and had to decline the hospitable invitation of the daughters of the house to stay to dinner. While the carriage was coming round, I made haste to change into my own skirt. I have no bump of locality for the interior of strange houses, and when I had left the room in which the change was effected, I found myself confronted by three doors all equally likely to lead into the hall. I selected the most likely one, and rashly advanced. It was the boudoir of Madame,--Madame who had retired with a bad headache, and was now seated over a bright wood fire, with her yellow-covered book of ‘Confessions’ in her hand, and a cigarette between her lips. Sympathy for her, thus cornered in her last stronghold, was my first emotion as I fled, but sympathy for myself has been a more lasting feeling as I think how I have established myself in the mind of Madame de Q. as a crowning example of the _gaucherie_ and stupidity of _Les Anglais pour rire_. CHAPTER XI.