It would have been three months afterwards that I received a letter from Madame, addressed from the yachtMostar, then in Norwegian waters. She sent me ten pounds for myself, and after telling me that she was cruising with Baron Albert and his sister—a piece of news which fairly took my breath away—she went on to remark that the train service from Brignoles to Aix is excellent, but that she preferred not to make the journey in a leather cap and a mackintosh.
So, you see, I guessed in a moment that she had slipped away to Brignoles while we were talking about her that morning, and just taken the early express to Aix without a word to anybody. We had been but three kilometres from the town when the tyre burst, and so the journey could hardly have fatigued her.
As for her husband, the so-called Count Joseph, I heard in Paris afterwards that he wasn't her husband at all, but a rich young Hungarian noble she was trying desperately hard to marry. The Count Albert had been sent to Monte Carlo by the young man's people to protect him from this ambitious lady, and right well he appears to have done the business, for he must have found her in Paris afterwards and offered her the hospitality of his yacht.
I hope his sister was on board; I do indeed hope so.
But this is a rum world—and Lord, the scandal that some people will think of makes me quite unhappy sometimes.
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