pect of knowing anybody belonging to this club, and
were so obviously cast down when their guests seemed to hesitate, that
Michael and Stella, more to please the Pension Regnier than themselves,
accepted Prince Raoul's offer.

It was amusing, too, this so excessively aristocratic club where every
afternoon Princesses and Duchesses and the wives of Greek financiers sat
at tea or watched the tennis and polo of their husbands and brothers and
sons. Stella and Michael played sets of tennis with Castera-Verduzan and
the vicomte de Miramont, luxurious sets in which there were always four
little boys to pick up the balls and at least three dozen balls to be
picked up. Stella was a great success as a tennis-player, and their
sponsor introduced the brother and sister to all the languidly beautiful
women sitting at tea, and also to the over-tailored sportsmen who were
cultivating a supposedly Britannic seriousness of attitude toward their
games. Soon Michael and Stella found themselves going out to dinner and
playing bridge and listening to much admiration of England in a
Franco-cockney accent that was the result of a foreign language mostly
acquired from grooms. With all its veneer of English freedom, it was
still a very ceremonious society, and though money had tempered the
rigidity of its forms and opinions, there was always visible in the
background of the noisiest party Black Papalism, a dominant Army and the
hope of the Orleanist succession. Verduzan also took them for long
drives in the forest, and altogether time went by very gayly and very
swiftly, until Stella woke up to the fact that her piano had been silent
for nearly a fortnight. Verduzan was waiting with his impatient car in
the prim road outside the Pension Regnier when she made this discovery,
and he looked very much mortified when she told him that to-day she
really ought to practice.

"But you must come because I have to go away to-morrow," he declared.

"Ah, but I've been making such wonderful resolutions ever since the sun
rose," Stella said, shaking her head. "I must work, mustn't I, Michael?"

"Oh, rot, she must come for this last time, mustn't she, Fane?"

Michael thought that once more might not spoil her execution
irreparably.

"Hurrah, you can't get out of it, Miss Fane!"

The car's horn tooted in grotesque exultation. Stella put on her
dust-cloak of silver-gray, and in a few minutes they were racing through
the forest so fast that the trees on e