Mr.
Pedlow.

"'He's game!' she says--and _ain't_ he?"

Across the table Madame de Vaurigard's eyes met Mellin's with a mocking
intelligence so complete that he caught her message without need of the
words she noiselessly formed with her lips: "I tol' you you would be
making love to her!"

He laughed joyously in answer. Why shouldn't he flirt with Lady
Mount-Rhyswicke? He was thoroughly happy; his Helene, his _belle
Marquise_, sat across the table from him sending messages to him with
her eyes. He adored her, but he liked Lady Mount-Rhyswicke--he liked
everybody and everything in the world. He liked Pedlow particularly, and
it no longer troubled him that the fat man should be a friend of Madame
de Vaurigard. Pedlow was a "character" and a wit as well. Mellin laughed
heartily at everything the Honorable Chandler Pedlow said.

"This is life," remarked the young man to his fair neighbor.

"What is? Sittin' round a table, eatin' and drinkin'?"

"Ah, lovely skeptic!" She looked at him strangely, but he continued with
growing enthusiasm: "I mean to sit at such a table as this, with such
a chef, with such wines--to know one crowded hour like this is to live!
Not a thing is missing; all this swagger furniture, the rich atmosphere
of smartness about the whole place; best of all, the company. It's a
great thing to have the _real_ people around you, the right sort, you
know, socially; people you'd ask to your own table at home. There are
only seven, but every one _distingue_, every one--"

She leaned both elbows on the table with her hands palm to palm, and,
resting her cheek against the back of her left hand, looked at him
steadily.

"And you--are you distinguished, too?"

"Oh, I wouldn't be much known over _here_," he said modestly.

"Do you write poetry?"

"Oh, not professionally, though it is published. I suppose"--he sipped
his champagne with his head a little to one side as though judging its
quality--"I suppose I 've been more or less a dilettante. I've knocked
about the world a good bit."

"Helene says you're one of these leisure American billionaires like Mr.
Cooley there," she said in her tired voice.

"Oh, none of us are really quite billionaires." He laughed
deprecatingly.

"No, I suppose not--not really. Go on and tell me some more about life
and this distinguished company."

"Hey, folks!" Mr. Pedlow's roar broke in upon this dialogue. "You two
are gittin' mighty thick over there. We're drinking a t