yes."

"I?" said Maggie, with a little laugh. "Oh--I think about my dresses,
and the new fashions, and parties, and all the things that girls do
think of."

Catrina shook her head. She looked stubborn and unconvinced. Then
suddenly she changed the conversation.

"Do you like M. de Chauxville?" she asked.

"No."

"Does Paul like him?"

"I don't know."

Catrina looked up for a moment only. Then her eyes returned to the
contemplation of the burning pine-logs.

"I wonder why you will not talk of Paul," she said, in a voice requiring
no answer.

Maggie moved rather uneasily. She had her back turned toward Catrina.

"I am afraid I am rather a dull person," she answered. "I have not much
to say about any body."

"And nothing about Paul?" suggested Catrina.

"Nothing. We were talking of M. de Chauxville."

"Yes; I do not understand M. de Chauxville. He seems to me to be the
incarnation of insincerity. He poses--even to himself. He is always
watching for the effect. I wonder what the effect of himself upon
himself may be."

Maggie laughed.

"That is rather complicated," she said. "It requires working out. I
think he is deeply impressed with his own astuteness. If he were simpler
he would be cleverer."

Catrina was afraid of Claude de Chauxville, and, because this was so,
she stared in wonder at the English girl, who dismissed him from the
conversation and her thoughts with a few careless words of contempt.
Such minds as that of Miss Delafield were quite outside the field of De
Chauxville's influence, while that Frenchman had considerable power over
highly strung and imaginative natures.

Catrina Lanovitch had begun by tolerating him--had proceeded to make the
serious blunder of permitting him to be impertinently familiar, and was
now exaggerating in her own mind the hold that he had over her. She did
not actually dislike him. So few people had taken the trouble or found
the expediency of endeavoring to sympathize with her or understand her
nature, that she was unconsciously drawn toward this man whom she now
feared.

In exaggerating the power he exercised over herself she somewhat
naturally exaggerated also his importance in the world and in the lives
of those around him. She had imagined him all-powerful; and the first
person to whom she mentioned his name dismissed the subject
indifferently. Her own entire sincerity had enabled her to detect the
insincerity of her ally. She had purposely made mention