t."

"Le Monsieur de la petite Dame," repeated Madame, testily. "That is
a title of new Paris--the Paris of your Americans and English. It is
villainously ill-bred."

M. Renard's laugh receded into the smile again, and the smile became of
double significance.

"True," he acquiesced, "but it is also villainously apropos. Look for
yourself."

Madame did so, and her next query, after she had dropped her glass
again, was a sharp one.

"Who is she--the wife?"

"She is what you are pleased to call one of our Americans! You know
the class,"--with a little wave of the hand,--"rich, unconventional,
comfortable people, who live well and dress well, and have an
incomprehensibly _naive_ way of going to impossible places and doing
impossible things by way of enjoyment. Our fair friend there, for
instance, has probably been round the world upon several occasions,
and is familiar with a number of places and objects of note fearful
to contemplate. They came here as tourists, and became fascinated with
European life. The most overwhelming punishment which could be inflicted
upon that excellent woman, the mother, would be that she should be
compelled to return to her New York, or Philadelphia, or Boston,
whichsoever it may be."

"Humph!" commented Madame. "But you have not told me the name."

"Madame Villefort's? No, not yet. It was Trent--Mademoiselle Bertha
Trent."

"She is not twenty yet," said Madame, in a queer, grumbling tone. "What
did she marry that man for?"

"God knows," replied M. Renard, not too devoutly, "Paris does not."

For some reason best known to herself, Madame de Castro looked angry.
She was a shrewd old person, with strong whims of her own, even at
seventy. She quite glared at the pretty American from under her bushy
eyebrows.

"Le Monsieur de la petite Dame!" she fumed. "I tell you it is low--_low_
to give a man such names."

"Oh!" returned Renard, shrugging his shoulders, "we did not give it to
him. It was an awkward servant who dubbed him so at first. She was new
to her position, and forgot his name, and being asked who had arrived,
stumbled upon this _bon mot: 'Un monsieur, Madame--le monsieur de la
petite dame,'_--and, being repeated and tossed lightly from hand to
hand, it has become at last an established witticism, albeit bandied
under breath."

It was characteristic of the august De Castro that during the remainder
of the evening's entertainment she should occupy herself more with her
n