Explore "Bardelys the Magnificent" by Rafael Sabatini on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I was returning that same afternoon from a long walk that I had taken - for my mood was of that unenviable sort that impels a man to be moving - when I found a travelling-chaise drawn up in the quadrangle as if ready for a journey. As I mounted the steps of the chateau I came face to face with mademoiselle, descending. I drew aside that she might pass; and this she did with her chin in the air, and her petticoat drawn to her that it might not touch me.
I would have spoken to her, but her eyes looked straight before her with a glance that was too forbidding; besides which there was the gaze of a half-dozen grooms upon us. So, bowing before her - the plume of my doffed hat sweeping the ground - I let her go. Yet I remained standing where she had passed me, and watched her enter the coach. I looked after the vehicle as it wheeled round and rattled out over the drawbridge, to raise a cloud of dust on the white, dry road beyond.