oof against your countryman's fascinations, but now, I know
just how much his fondest vows are worth, and I have been deaf to them
all, for I would not let my heart mislead me against my reason and my
conscience. Ah, petite! you little guess what the traitor word 'love'
means here, in Paris. We women grow accustomed to our fate, but the
lesson is hard sometimes."

"You have been reading 'Mes Confidences,' lately?" asked Nina, with a
sarcastic flash of her brilliant eyes.

"How cruel! Do you suppose I can have no _emotions_ except I learn them
second-hand through Lamartine or Delphine Gay? You are very satirical,
Miss Gordon----How strange!" said the baronne, interrupting herself;
"your bouquet is the fac-simile of mine! Look! De Kerroualle sent you
that I fancy? You know he raffoles of you. I was very silly to use mine,
but Mr. Vaughan sent me such a pretty note with it, that I had not the
resolution to disappoint him. Poor Ernest!" And Madame sighed softly, as
if bewailing in her tender heart the woes her obduracy caused. The blood
flamed up in Nina's cheeks, and her hand clenched hard on Ernest's
flowers: they _were_ the fac-similes of the widow's; delicate pink
blossoms, mixed with white azalias. "Is he here to-night, do you know?"
madame continued. "I dare say not; he is behind the coulisses, most
likely. Celine, the new danseuse from the Fenice, makes her debut
to-night. Here comes poor Gaston to petition for a valse. Be kind to
him, pray."

She herself went off to the ball-room, and the effect of her exordium
was to make Nina very disagreeable to poor De Kerroualle, whom she
really liked, and who was _entete_ about her. Not long afterwards, Nina
saw in the distance Vaughan's haughty head and powerful brow, and her
silly little heart beat as quick as a pigeon's just caught in the trap:
he was talking to the widow.

"Look at our young English friend," Pauline was saying, "how she is
flirting with Gaston, and De Lafitolle, and De Concressault. Certainly,
when your Englishwomen do coquet, they go further than any of us."

"Est-ce possible?" said Ernest, raising his eyebrows.

"Mechant!" cried madame, with a chastising blow of her fan. "But, do you
know, I admire the petite very much. I believe all really beautiful
women had that rare golden hair of hers--Lucrezia Borgia (I could never
bear Grisi as _Lucrezia_, for that very reason). La Cenci, the Duchess
of Portsmouth, AEnone--and Helen, I am sure, netted Paris