"they have been a great
pleasure, but I don't want to _buy_ them from him, either."

"I don't _think_ he'd sell them," Bulstrode was certain of it, "they're
extremely precious in his eyes."

"I'm a good judge of works of art, however," she said after a moment,
"that is to say, I know a good thing when I see it. There was a little
picture in one of the shops back of me that I would have given a lot to
own."

Her friend exclaimed: "Are you going to buy it! That is to say, will
Falconer buy it for you?"

"My dear soul--with his horse running to-morrow! At any rate, the
bijou is already bought above my head. I went in yesterday to see what
was the least they would take for it, and found the Prince Pollona, the
Englishman who buys for the Wallace Collection, and somebody who, they
tell me, was the Rockefeller of St. Petersburg. Well, my little
picture was what they all wanted, and you can imagine that _I_ retired
from the running...! But I tell you this," she said, "only to show you
how very good my taste is, and so that you may rely on my selections."

Bulstrode smiled in a way that said he thought he might rely on her,
but still he asked rather quizzically, "Well, what are you going to
recommend to me _now_?"

The lady at the moment, not having anything in mind, looked suddenly
up, gave him whimsically:

"Molly and her Marquis."

The two young people with Jack Falconer were coming slowly along the
Rue de Paris toward them. The grace of the girl, her freshness under
her wide hat where flowers and ribbons danced and blended; the radiant
pleasure she exhaled, the swing of her dress, her youth, expressed so
happily the joy of life, recommended themselves easily in a flash....

"Oh, _Molly_--she's perfect!"

"And the Marquis?"

"He is perfectly in _love_," ... Bulstrode allowed him so much.

"My dear friend, remember I know my _objets d'art_."

"Oh, as an _objet d'art_...!"

Bulstrode took the young man in: his white immaculateness, his
boutonniere, his panama--(not less than forty dollars a straw, as Jimmy
knew) his monocle.

"As an _objet d'art_," he further conceded to her, "he's perfect, too!"

"As an _homme de race_," said the American lady eagerly, with the true
Republican appreciation of blood and title, "as an _homme du monde_, as
a..."

"Title?" he finished for her. "Oh, the Presle-Vaulx are all right!
I'll grant him a perfect title, sound as a bell, first Crusade--_Leonce
de Presle-Vaulx