all our
penmanship to the winds.

While I was smoking a pipe and deciphering a long communication
received from the gentleman who further entangled my affairs in
England, a visitor was announced to me.

"Monsieur Alphonse Giraud."

"Why?" I wondered as I rose to receive this gentleman. "Why, Monsieur
Alphonse Giraud?"

He was already in the doorway, and, I made no doubt, had conceived an
ultra-British toilet for the occasion. For outwardly he was more
English than myself. He came forward, holding out his hand, and I
thought of Madame's words. Were we to become friends?

"Monsieur Howard," he said, "I have to apologise. Mon Dieu!--to think
that you have been in Paris three months, and I have never called to
place myself at your disposition! And a friend of Alfred Gayerson, of
that good, stout John Turner--of half a dozen hardy English friends of
mine."

I was about to explain that his oversight had a good excuse in the
fact that my existence must have been unknown to him, but he silenced
me with his two outstretched hands, waving a violent negation.

"No--no!" he said, smiting himself grievously on the chest. "I have no
excuse. You say that I was ignorant of your existence--then it was my
business to find it out. Ignorance is often a crime. An English
gentleman--a sportsman--a fox-hunter! For you chase the fox, I know. I
see it in your brown face. And you belong to the English Jockey
Club--is it not so?"

I admitted that it was so, and Alphonse Giraud's emotion was such that
he could only press my hand in silence.

"Ah, well!" he cried almost immediately, with the utmost gaiety. "We
have begun late, but that is no reason why it should not be a good
friendship--is it?"

And he took the chair I offered with such hearty good-will that my
cold English sympathy was drawn towards him.

"I came but yesterday from the South," he went on. "Indeed, from La
Pauline, where I have been paying a delightful visit. Madame de
Clericy--so kind--and Mademoiselle Lucille--"

He twisted up the unsuccessful side of his mustache, and gave a quick
little sigh. Then he remembered his scarf, and attended to the
horseshoe pin that adorned it.

"You know my father," he said, suddenly, "the--er--Baron Giraud. He
has been more fortunate than myself in making your acquaintance
earlier."

I bowed and said what was necessary.

"A kind man--a dear man," said the Baron's son. "But no sportsman.
Figure to yourself--he fears an open w