Sogrange, with a murmured word of apology, had slipped away long ago.
Decidedly, for an Englishman, Peter was something of a marvel!

Madame la Duchesse moved her head towards the empty chair.

"He is a great friend of yours--the Marquis de Sogrange?" she asked,
with a certain inflection in her tone which Peter was not slow to
notice.

"Indeed no!" he answered. "A few years ago I was frequently in Paris. I
made his acquaintance then, but we have met very seldom since."

"You are not traveling together, then?"

"By no means. I recognized him only as he boarded the steamer at
Cherbourg."

"He is not a popular man in our world," she remarked. "One speaks of him
as a schemer."

"Is there anything left to scheme for in France?" Peter asked,
carelessly. "He is, perhaps, a monarchist?"

"His ancestry alone would compel a devoted allegiance to royalism," the
Duchesse declared, "but I do not think that he is interested in any of
these futile plots to reinstate the House of Orleans. I, Monsieur le
Baron, am Spanish."

"I have scarcely lived so far out of the world as to have heard nothing
of the Duchesse della Nermino," Peter replied with empressement. "The
last time I saw you, Duchesse, you were in the suite of the Infanta."

"Like all Englishmen, I see you possess a memory," she said, smiling.

"Duchesse," Peter answered, lowering his voice, "without the memories
which one is fortunate enough to collect as one passes along, life would
be a dreary place. The most beautiful things in the world cannot
remain always with us. It is well, then, that the shadow of them can be
recalled to us in the shape of dreams."

Her eyes rewarded him for his gallantry. Peter felt that he was doing
very well indeed. He indulged himself in a brief silence. Presently she
returned to the subject of Sogrange.

"I think," she remarked, "that of all the men in the world I expected
least to see the Marquis de Sogrange on board a steamer bound for New
York. What can a man of his type find to amuse him in the New World?"

"One wonders, indeed," Peter assented. "As a matter of fact, I did read
in a newspaper a few days ago that he was going to Mexico in connection
with some excavations there. He spoke to me of it just now. They seem to
have discovered a ruined temple of the Incas, or something of the sort."

The Duchesse breathed what sounded very much like a sigh of relief.

"I had forgotten," she admitted, "that New York itself need not