Encouraged by love, Little worked hard upon his new flying-machine. His
labors were lightened by talking of the beloved one with her French maid
Therese, whom he had discreetly bribed. Mademoiselle Therese was venal,
like all her class, but in this instance I fear she was not bribed by
British gold. Strange as it may seem to the British mind, it was British
genius, British eloquence, British thought, that brought her to the feet
of this young savan.
“I believe,” said Lady Caroline, one day, interrupting her maid in a
glowing eulogium upon the skill of “M. Leetell,”—“I believe you are
in love with this professor.” A quick flush crossed the olive cheek of
Therese, which Lady Caroline afterward remembered.
The eventful day of trial came. The public were gathered, impatient and
scornful as the pig-headed public are apt to be. In the open area a long
cylindrical balloon, in shape like a Bologna sausage, swayed above the
machine, from which, like some enormous bird caught in a net, it tried
to free itself. A heavy rope held it fast to the ground.
Little was waiting for the ballast, when his eye caught Lady Caroline’s
among the spectators. The glance was appealing. In a moment he was at
her side.
“I should like so much to get into the machine,” said the arch-hypocrite
demurely.
“Are you engaged to marry young Raby?” said Little bluntly.
“As you please,” she said with a curtsey; “do I take this as a refusal?”
Little was a gentleman. He lifted her and her lap-dog into the car.
“How nice! it won’t go off?”
“No, the rope is strong, and the ballast is not yet in.”
A report like a pistol, a cry from the spectators, a thousand hands
stretched to grasp the parted rope, and the balloon darted upward.
Only one hand of that thousand caught the rope,—Little’s! But in the
same instant the horror-stricken spectators saw him whirled from his
feet and borne upward, still clinging to the rope, into space.