“_Mon dieu!_” said the Comtesse, laughing, “of course I looked as if I liked it. If I had looked as if I disliked it I could not have kept him for ten minutes, and then what would have happened to you, mademoiselle?” “It was very, very good of you,” said Una, penitently. “I can never thank you enough.” “Oh, it wasn’t so very good of me, and I don’t want to be thanked at all. I’ll tell you a secret, Una, and Hannah shall hear it too. I did like it. Now, what do you think?” “You would, my lady,” said Hannah. “I know that finely, I’d have liked it myself when I was young and frisky like you.” “What would you have liked, Hannah?” asked the Comtesse. “Eh! just what you liked yourself, my lady; just seeing a man making himself a bigger fool nor the Lord meant him to be for the sake of my bonny face. I’m thinking you’re the same as another for a’ you’re a countess and have a braw foreign name. You just like what I’d have liked, and what all women ever I heard tell on liked in their hearts, though maybe they wouldna own up till it, from thon wench, that might have been a gran’ lady, too, for a’ I ken, who made the great silly gaby of a Samson lie still while she clipped the seven locks off of his head. She liked fine to see him sleeping there like the tap he was for all the strongness of him.” “You are right, Hannah, you are right. Oh, Una dear, if you could have seen him--but you wouldn’t understand. What’s the good of telling you? Hannah, if you’d seen him sitting there like a great woolly sheep, with the silliest expression in his eyes; if you’d seen him putting out his hand to touch me, pretending he did it by accident, and then pulling it away again like one of those snails that crawl about in the sandhills when you touch his horns with the end of a blade of grass. If you’d seen him. Oh, I wish you’d seen him!” “Faith, I seen plenty.” “You did not, Hannah; you didn’t see half. He was far, far better before you came back.” She burst into a peal of half hysterical laughter. She may have enjoyed the captain’s company, but he had evidently tried her nerves. “But, Una dear,” she said, when she grew calm again, “I hope Maurice will come soon, or that American ship, or something. I won’t be able to go on very long.” “There’s been an easterly breeze since noon,” said Una, “and there’s a haze out at sea.” “Do talk sense, Una. Here I’ve been sacrificing myself for you all day, and when I ask you for a little sympathy you talk to me about an east wind.” “But the east wind will bring the brig, aunt. How could she get here from Glasgow without the wind?” CHAPTER XVIII