red in the
doorway, courtesying to me and saying in perfect English: "How do you
do, Mr. Scarlett; and how do you like my spinning songs, if you
please?"

The girl was Mademoiselle Sylvia Elven, the marvellously clever
actress from the Odeon, the same young woman who had played the
Alsacienne at La Trappe, as perfectly in voice and costume as she now
played the Bretonne.

"You need not be astonished at all," she said, calmly, "if you will
only reflect that my name is Elven, which is also the name of a Breton
town. Naturally, I am a Bretonne from Elven, and my own name is
Duhamel--Sylvenne Duhamel. I thought I ought to tell you, so that you
would not think me too clever and try to carry me off on your horse
again."

I laughed uncertainly; clever women who talk cleverly always disturb
me. Besides, somehow, I felt she was not speaking the truth, yet I
could not imagine why she should lie to me.

"You were more fluent to the helpless turkey-girl," she suggested,
maliciously.

I had absolutely nothing to say, which appeared to gratify her, for
she dimpled and smiled under her snowy-winged coiffe, from which a
thick gold strand of hair curled on her forehead--a sad bit of
coquetry in a Bretonne from Elven, if she told the truth.

"I only came to renew an old and deeply valued friendship," she said,
with mock sentimentality; "I am going back to my flax now."

However, she did not move.

"And, by-the-way," she said, languidly, "is there in your
intellectual circus company a young gentleman whose name is Eyre?"

"Kelly Eyre? Yes," I said, sulkily.

"Ah."

She strolled out of the room, hesitated, then turned in the doorway
with a charming smile.

"The Countess will return from her gallop at five."

She waited as though expecting an answer, but I only bowed.

"Would you take a message to Mistaire Kelly Eyre for me?" she asked,
sweetly.

I said that I would.

"Then please say that: '_On Sunday the book-stores are closed in
Paris._'"

"Is that what I am to say?"

"Exactly that."

"Very well, mademoiselle."

"Of course, if he asks who told you--you may say that it was a
Bretonne at Point Paradise."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing, monsieur."

She courtesied and vanished.

"Little minx," I thought, "what mischief are you preparing now?" and
I rested my elbow on the window-sill and gazed out into the garden,
where apricot-trees and fig-trees lined the winding walks between beds
of old-fashioned herbs, an