nd to be in time for things, or to change it often as to where she
will dine. Then he has to learn to give up any pleasure of his own for
hers--and travel when she wants to travel, or stay home when she wants
to go alone. If he is an Englishman he don't have brains enough to make
the money, but he must let her spend what he has got how she likes, and
not interfere with her own."

"And in return he gets?"

"The woman he happens to want, I suppose." And the widow laughed,
showing her wonderfully preserved brilliant white teeth.

"You enunciate great truths, belle dame!" said Hector, "and your last
sentence is the greatest of all--'_The woman he happens to want._'"

"Which brings us back to our muttons--in this case only a defenceless
baby lamb. Now tell me what you are here for, trying to cajole me with
your good looks and mock humility."

"I am here to ask you to help me to see her again, then," said Hector,
who knew when to be direct. "I have only met her three times, as you
know, but I have fallen in love, and she is going away next week, and
there is only one Paris in the world."

"You can do a great deal of mischief in a week," Mrs. McBride said,
looking at him again critically. "I ought not to help you, but I can't
resist you--there! What can we devise?"

It is possible the probability of Theodora's father making a fourth may
have had something thing to do with her complaisance. Anyway, it was
decided that if feasible the four should spend a day at Versailles.

They should go in their two automobiles in time for breakfast at the
Reservoirs. They would start, Theodora in Mrs. McBride's with her, and
Captain Fitzgerald with Lord Bracondale, and each couple could spend the
afternoon as they pleased, dining again at the Reservoirs and whirling
back to Paris in the moonlight. A truly rural and refreshing programme,
good for the soul of man.

"And I can rely upon you to get rid of the husband?" said Lord
Bracondale, finally. "I do not see the poetry of the affair with his
bald head and mutton-chop whiskers as an accessory."

"Leave that to Captain Fitzgerald and myself," Mrs. McBride said,
proudly. "I have a scheme that Mr. Brown shall spend the day with
Clutterbuck R. Tubbs, examining some new machinery they are both
interested in. Leave it to me!" The part of _Deus ex machina_ was always
a role the widow loved.

Then they descended to an agreeable lunch in the restaurant, with a
numerous party of her friend