was glad that, having her back to him, she was
unable to see how he looked. It seemed the proper moment to present
myself and make her my bow; but just as I was about to leave my place a
gentleman, whom in a moment I perceived to be an old acquaintance, came
to occupy the next chair. Recognition and mutual greetings followed, and
I was forced to postpone my visit to Madame Blumenthal. I was not sorry,
for it very soon occurred to me that Niedermeyer would be just the man to
give me a fair prose version of Pickering's lyric tributes to his friend.
He was an Austrian by birth, and had formerly lived about Europe a great
deal in a series of small diplomatic posts. England especially he had
often visited, and he spoke the language almost without accent. I had
once spent three rainy days with him in the house of an English friend in
the country. He was a sharp observer, and a good deal of a gossip; he
knew a little something about every one, and about some people
everything. His knowledge on social matters generally had the quality of
all German science; it was copious, minute, exhaustive.

"Do tell me," I said, as we stood looking round the house, "who and what
is the lady in white, with the young man sitting behind her."

"Who?" he answered, dropping his glass. "Madame Blumenthal! What! It
would take long to say. Be introduced; it's easily done; you will find
her charming. Then, after a week, you will tell me what she is."

"Perhaps I should not. My friend there has known her a week, and I don't
think he is yet able to give a coherent account of her."

He raised his glass again, and after looking a while, "I am afraid your
friend is a little--what do you call it?--a little 'soft.' Poor fellow!
he's not the first. I have never known this lady that she has not had
some eligible youth hovering about in some such attitude as that,
undergoing the softening process. She looks wonderfully well, from here.
It's extraordinary how those women last!"

"You don't mean, I take it, when you talk about 'those women,' that
Madame Blumenthal is not embalmed, for duration, in a certain infusion of
respectability?"

"Yes and no. The atmosphere that surrounds her is entirely of her own
making. There is no reason in her antecedents that people should drop
their voice when they speak of her. But some women are never at their
ease till they have given some damnable twist or other to their position
before the world. The