so are YOU. Introduce me."
This not being exactly the reply that Miss de Laine expected, she
momentarily hesitated: but the duchess profited by it to walk over to
the piano and introduce herself. When she rose to go she invited Helen
to luncheon with her the next day. "Come early, my dear, and we'll have
a long talk." Helen pointed out hesitatingly that she was practically
a guest of the de Laines. "Ah, well, that's true, my dear; then you may
bring one of them with you."
Helen went to the luncheon, but was unaccompanied. She had a long talk
with the dowager. "I am not rich, my dear, like your friends, and cannot
afford to pay ten napoleons for a song. Like you I have seen 'better
days.' But this is no place for you, child, and if you can bear with an
old woman's company for a while I think I can find you something to
do." That evening Helen left for England with the duchess, a piece of
"ingratitude, indelicacy, and shameless snobbery," which Miss de Laine
was never weary of dilating upon. "And to think I introduced her, though
she was a professional!"
*****
It was three years after. Paris, reviving under the republic, had
forgotten Helen and the American colony; and the American colony,
emigrating to more congenial courts, had forgotten Paris.
It was a bleak day of English summer when Helen, standing by the window
of the breakfast-room at Hamley Court, and looking over the wonderful
lawn, kept perennially green by humid English skies, heard the
practical, masculine voice of the duchess in her ear at the same moment
that she felt the gentle womanly touch of her hand on her shoulder.
"We are going to luncheon at Moreland Hall to-day, my dear."
"Why, we were there only last week!" said Helen.
"Undoubtedly," returned the duchess dryly, "and we may luncheon there
next week and the next following. And," she added, looking into her
companion's gray eyes, "it rests with YOU to stay there if you choose."
Helen stared at her protector.
"My dear," continued the duchess, slipping her arm around Helen's waist,
"Sir James has honored ME--as became my relations to YOU--with his
confidences. As you haven't given me YOURS I suppose you have none, and
that I am telling you news when I say that Sir James wishes to marry
you."
The unmistakable astonishment in the girl's eye satisfied the duchess
even before her voice.
"But he scarcely knows me or anything of me!" said the young girl
quickly.
"On the contrary
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