[Illustration: "At Josephine's right sat a handsome young foreigner."]

Norman, without seeming to do so, noted the rest of the Burroughs party.
At Josephine's right sat a handsome young foreigner, and it took small
experience of the world to discover that he was paying court to her, and
that she was pleased and flattered. Norman asked the waiter who he was,
and learned that he came from the waiter's own province of France, was
the Duc de Valdome. At first glance Norman had thought him
distinguished. Afterward he discriminated. There are several kinds or
degrees of distinction. There is distinction of race, of class, of
family, of dress, of person. As Frenchman, as aristocrat, as a scion of
the ancient family of Valdome, as a specimen of tailoring and valeting,
Miss Burroughs's young man was distinguished. But in his own proper
person he was rather insignificant. The others at the table were
Americans. Following Miss Burroughs's cue, they sought an opportunity to
speak friendlily to Norman--and he gave it them. His acknowledgment of
those effusive salutations was polite but restrained.

"They are friends of yours?" said Dorothy.

"They were," said he. "And they may be again--when they are friends of
_ours_."

"I'm not very good at making friends," she warned him. "I don't like
many people." This time her unconscious and profound egotism pleased
him. Evidently it did not occur to her that she should be eager to be
friends with those people on any terms, that the only question was
whether they would receive her.

She asked: "Why was Miss--Miss Burroughs so friendly?"

"Why shouldn't she be?"

"But I thought you threw her over."

He winced at this crude way of putting it. "On the contrary, she threw
me over."

Dorothy laughed incredulously. "I know better. Mr. Tetlow told me."

"She threw me over," repeated he coldly. "Tetlow was repeating malicious
and ignorant gossip."

Dorothy laughed again--it was her second glass of champagne. "You say
that because it's the honorable thing to say. But I know."

"I say it because it's true," said he.

He spoke quietly, but if she had drunk many more than two glasses of an
unaccustomed and heady liquor she would have felt his intonation. She
paled and shrank and her slim white fingers fluttered nervously at the
collar of her dress. "I was only joking," she murmured.

He laughed good-naturedly. "Don't look as if I had given you a
whipping," said he. "Surely you're no