ys? I don't consider him any
relation to me at all. It's too distant. If I acknowledged all the
cousins forced on me from over there I might as well include Abraham and
Adam. Are you the first or the second wife's son?"

He explained his connection with the Davenant name. "But that isn't what
I came to talk about, madame--not about myself. I wanted to tell you
of--of your nephew--Mr. Henry Guion."

She turned with a movement like that of a fleeing nymph, her hand
stretched behind her. "Don't. I don't want to hear about him. Nor about
my niece. They're strangers to me. I don't know them."

"You'd like to know them now, madame--because they're in great trouble."

She took refuge behind a big English arm-chair, leaning on the back.

"I dare say. It's what they were likely to come to. I told my niece so,
the last time she allowed me the privilege of her conversation. But I
told her, too, that in the day of her calamity she wasn't to look to
me."

"She isn't looking to you, madame. _I_ am. I'm looking to you because I
imagine you can help her. There's no one else--"

"And has she sent you as her messenger? Why can't she come herself, if
it's so bad as all that--or write? I thought she was married--to some
Englishman."

"They're not married yet, madame; and unless you help her I don't see
how they're going to be--the way things stand."

"Unless I help her! My good fellow, you don't know what you're saying.
Do you know that she refused--refused violently--to help _me_?"

He shook his head, his blue eyes betraying some incredulity.

"Well, then, I'll tell you. It'll show you. You'll be able to go away
again with a clear conscience, knowing you've done your best and failed.
Sit down."

As she showed no intention of taking a seat herself, he remained
standing.

"She refused the Duc de Berteuil." She made the statement with head
erect and hands flung apart. "I suppose you have no idea of what that
meant to me?"

"I'm afraid I haven't."

"Of course you haven't. I don't know an American who _would_ have.
You're so engrossed in your own small concerns. None of you have any
conception of the things that really matter--the higher things. Well,
then, let me tell you. The Duc de Berteuil is--or rather _was_--the
greatest parti in France. He isn't any more, because they've married him
to a rich girl from South America or one of those places--brown as a
berry--with a bust--" She rounded her arms to give an idea of the bu