ee if there is
enough champagne. Certainly--you can say to her what you like. But
twenty years hence she will be just as she is to-day; that's how I see
her.'

'Lord, what is it you do to her?' Raymond groaned, as he accompanied his
hostess back to the crowded rooms.

He knew exactly what she would have replied if she had been a
Frenchwoman; she would have said to him, triumphantly, overwhelmingly:
'Que voulez-vous? Elle adore sa mere!' She was, however, only a
Californian, unacquainted with the language of epigram, and her answer
consisted simply of the words: 'I am sorry you have ideas that make you
unhappy. I guess you are the only person here who hasn't enjoyed
himself to-night.'

Raymond repeated to himself, gloomily, for the rest of the evening,
'Elle adore sa mere--elle adore sa mere!' He remained very late, and
when but twenty people were left and he had observed that the Marquise,
passing her hand into Mrs. Temperly's arm, led her aside as if for some
important confabulation (some new light doubtless on what might be hoped
for Effie), he persuaded Dora to let the rest of the guests depart in
peace (apparently her mother had told her to look out for them to the
very last), and come with him into some quiet corner. They found an
empty sofa in the outlasting lamp-light, and there the girl sat down
with him. Evidently she knew what he was going to say, or rather she
thought she did; for in fact, after a little, after he had told her that
he had spoken to her mother and she had told him he might speak to
_her_, he said things that she could not very well have expected.

'Is it true that you wish to remain with Effie and Tishy? That's what
your mother calls it when she means that you will give me up.'

'How can I give you up?' the girl demanded. 'Why can't we go on being
friends, as I asked you the evening you dined here?'

'What do you mean by friends?'

'Well, not making everything impossible.'

'You didn't think anything impossible of old,' Raymond rejoined,
bitterly. 'I thought you liked me then, and I have even thought so
since.'

'I like you more than I like any one. I like you so much that it's my
principal happiness.'

'Then why are there impossibilities?'

'Oh, some day I'll tell you!' said Dora, with a quick sigh. 'Perhaps
after Tishy is married. And meanwhile, are you not going to remain in
Paris, at any rate? Isn't your work here? You are not here for me only.
You can come to the house ofte