shall see me before then."

He turned to Mills suddenly.

"Will your cousin come south this year, to that beautiful villa of his at
Cannes?"

Mills hardly deigned to answer that he didn't know anything about his
cousin's movements.

"A _grand seigneur_ combined with a great connoisseur," opined the other
heavily. His mouth had gone slack and he looked a perfect and grotesque
imbecile under his wig-like crop of white hair. Positively I thought he
would begin to slobber. But he attacked Blunt next.

"Are you on your way down, too? A little flutter. . . It seems to me you
haven't been seen in your usual Paris haunts of late. Where have you
been all this time?"

"Don't you know where I have been?" said Mr. Blunt with great precision.

"No, I only ferret out things that may be of some use to me," was the
unexpected reply, uttered with an air of perfect vacancy and swallowed by
Mr. Blunt in blank silence.

At last he made ready to rise from the table. "Think over what I have
said, my dear Rita."

"It's all over and done with," was Dona Rita's answer, in a louder tone
than I had ever heard her use before. It thrilled me while she
continued: "I mean, this thinking." She was back from the remoteness of
her meditation, very much so indeed. She rose and moved away from the
table, inviting by a sign the other to follow her; which he did at once,
yet slowly and as it were warily.

It was a conference in the recess of a window. We three remained seated
round the table from which the dark maid was removing the cups and the
plates with brusque movements. I gazed frankly at Dona Rita's profile,
irregular, animated, and fascinating in an undefinable way, at her
well-shaped head with the hair twisted high up and apparently held in its
place by a gold arrow with a jewelled shaft. We couldn't hear what she
said, but the movement of her lips and the play of her features were full
of charm, full of interest, expressing both audacity and gentleness. She
spoke with fire without raising her voice. The man listened
round-shouldered, but seeming much too stupid to understand. I could see
now and then that he was speaking, but he was inaudible. At one moment
Dona Rita turned her head to the room and called out to the maid, "Give
me my hand-bag off the sofa."

At this the other was heard plainly, "No, no," and then a little lower,
"You have no tact, Rita. . . ." Then came her argument in a low,
penetrating voice which