he did not hear
aright.

"The Countess de Vaurigard. Queen! met her in London. Sneyd introduced
me to her. You remember Sneyd on the steamer? Baldish Englishman--red
nose--doesn't talk much--younger brother of Lord Rugden, so he says.
Played poker some. Well, _yes!_"

"I saw him. I didn't meet him."

"You didn't miss a whole lot. Fact is, before we landed I almost had him
sized up for queer, but when he introduced me to the Countess I saw my
mistake. He must be the real thing. _She_ certainly is! You come along
up and see."

So Mellin followed, to make his bow before a thin, dark, charmingly
pretty young woman, who smiled up at him from her deck-chair through
an enhancing mystery of veils; and presently he found himself sitting
beside her. He could not help trembling slightly at first, but he would
have giving a great deal if, by some miraculous vision, Mary Kramer and
other friends of his in Cranston could have seen him engaged in what he
thought of as "conversational badinage" with the Comtesse de Vaurigard.

Both the lady and her name thrilled him. He thought he remembered the
latter in Froissart: it conjured up "baronial halls" and "donjon keeps,"
rang resonantly in his mind like "Let the portcullis fall!" At home he
had been wont to speak of the "oldest families in Cranston," complaining
of the invasions of "new people" into the social territory of the
McCords and Mellins and Kramers--a pleasant conception which the
presence of a De Vaurigard revealed to him as a petty and shameful
fiction; and yet his humility, like his little fit of trembling, was
of short duration, for gay geniality of Madame de Vaurigard put him
amazingly at ease.

At Calais young Cooley (with a matter-of-course air, and not seeming to
feel the need of asking permission) accompanied her to a compartment,
and Mellin walked with them to the steps of the coach, where he paused,
murmuring some words of farewell.

Madame de Vaurigard turned to him with a prettily assumed dismay.

"What! You stay at Calais?" she cried, pausing with one foot on the step
to ascend. "Oh! I am sorry for you. Calais is ter-rible!"

"No. I am going on to Paris."

"So? You have frien's in another coach which you wish to be wiz?"

"No, no, indeed," he stammered hastily.

"Well, my frien'," she laughed gayly, "w'y don' you come wiz us?"

Blushing, he followed Cooley into the coach, to spend five happy hours,
utterly oblivious of the bright French landscape whi