CHAPTER XXIV LA PEROUSE We had finished our meal--simple enough, goodness knows. Our drink had been milk carried in one of those clear glass bottles used for vin de Grave, and the bottle lay on the grass beside us, an innocent witness of our temperance. We had finished, I say, and we were watching a moorhen with her convoy of chicks paddling on the deep-blue surface of the pond, when voices from amidst the trees drew our attention; and two stout men in undress livery, bearing a basket between them, came from beneath the shade of the elms, and straight towards us. After the men, and led by Madame Ancelot's little boy, came a party of ladies and gentlemen, amidst whom I recognised my guardian. The old gentleman, as though May had touched him with her magic wand, had discarded his ordinary sober attire, and was dressed in a suit of some light-coloured material, very elegant, and harmonising strangely well with the exquisite toilets of his companions. He wore a flower in his buttonhole, and he was walking beside a girl whom I recognised at once as Amy Féraud. The two other women I did not then know; but one of them, dark and beautiful, I afterwards discovered to be the famous model La Perouse. The two men who made up the party were peers of France; and if Beelzebub himself had suddenly broken from the trees I could not have been more disturbed than by this eruption of Paris into our innocent paradise. In a flash I saw the whole thing. This was some move of my guardian's. I had told Madame Ancelot that we would be by the grand pool, and Madame Ancelot's boy had led them. But M. le Vicomte was much too astute an old gentleman for subterfuge, whatever his plan might be. "Welcome!" he cried, when we were within speaking distance. "I have been searching for you. Ah, what a day! We have just come down from Paris on M. le Comte de ----'s drag. My ward, M. Patrique Mahon; M. le Comte de ----." I bowed stiffly as he introduced me to the men. "And mademoiselle?" asked the old gentleman, raising his hat and standing uncovered before Eloise. But I had no need to introduce my companion. La Perouse (oh, what a voice she had! Hard, metallic, shallow, low)--La Perouse, with a little shriek of recognition, cried out: "Marie! Why, it is Marie!" Then she kissed her, and I could have struck her on the beautiful mouth, whose voice was a voice of brass, for innocence told me she was bad, and part of Eloise's wretched past. Ah, me! If an eclipse had come over the sun, the beauty of the day could not have been more spoilt, the loveliness of spring more ruined. The stout servant-men, with the dexterity of conjurers, unpacked the great basket, spread a wide cloth, and, in a trice, a luncheon was spread out to which the Emperor himself might have sat down. There was no resisting M. le Vicomte. We had to sit down with the rest, and make a pretence to eat. But Eloise refused wine, as did I.