e tarts are good enough for the
Queen of Hearts, let alone a duchess, no matter how arch. But the plot
of the piece is this. The duchess person goes to Gerbeaud's about twice
a week. And they always spread a red carpet for her. And Mizzi always
manages to cut away in time to stand there in front of Gerbeaud's and
see her come out. She's a gorgeous mimic, that little kid. And though I
couldn't understand a word she said I managed to get out of it just
this: That some day they're going to spread a red carpet for Mizzi and
she's going to walk down it in glory. If you'd seen her face when she
said it, S.H., you wouldn't laugh."

"I wouldn't laugh anyway," said Hahn, seriously.

And that's the true story of Mizzi Markis's beginning. Few people know
it.

* * * * *

There they were, the three of them. And of the three, Mizzi's ambition
seemed to be the fiercest, the most implacable. She worked like a horse,
cramming English, French, singing. In some things she was like a woman
of thirty; in others a child of ten. Her gratitude to Hahn was pathetic.
No one ever doubted that he was in love with her almost from the
first--he who had resisted the professional beauties of three decades.

You know she wasn't--and isn't--a beauty, even in that portrait of her
by Sargent, with her two black-haired, stunning-looking boys, one on
either side. But she was one of those gorgeously healthy women whose
very presence energizes those with whom she comes in contact. And then
there was about her a certain bounteousness. There's no other word for
it, really. She reminded you of those gracious figures you see posed for
pictures entitled "Autumn Harvest."

While she was studying she had a little apartment with a middle-aged
woman to look after her, and she must have been a handful. A born cook,
she was, and Hahn and Wallie used to go there to dinner whenever she
would let them. She cooked it herself. Hahn would give up any engagement
for a dinner at Mizzi's. When he entered her little sitting room his
cares seemed to drop from him. She never got over cutting bread as the
peasant women do it--the loaf held firmly against her breast, the knife
cutting toward her. Hahn used to watch her and laugh. Sometimes she
would put on the little black head-shawl of her Budapest days and sing
the street-song about the hundred geese in a row. A delightful, impudent
figure.

With the very first English she learned she told Hah