made to order, and make them
ridiculous; but ours is a real one. It's my own--not my husband's; the
Duvals are an old French family, but they're not noble. I was a Morris,
you know, and our line runs back to the old French ducal house of
Montmorenci. And last summer, when we were motoring, I hunted up one of
their chateaux; and see! I brought over this."

Mrs. Winnie pointed to a suit of armour, placed in a passage leading to
the billiard-room. "I have had the lights fixed," she added. And she
pressed a button, and all illumination vanished, save for a faint red
glow just above the man in armour.

"Doesn't he look real?" said she. (He had his visor down, and a
battle-axe in his mailed hands.) "I like to imagine that he may have
been my twentieth great-grandfather. I come and sit here, and gaze at
him and shiver. Think what a terrible time it must have been to live
in--when men wore things like that! It couldn't be any worse to be a
crab."

"You seem to be fond of strange emotions," said Montague, laughing.

"Maybe I am," said the other. "I like everything that's old and
romantic, and makes you forget this stupid society world."

She stood brooding for a moment or two, gazing at the figure. Then she
asked, abruptly, "Which do you like best, pictures or swimming?"

"Why," replied the man, laughing and perplexed, "I like them both, at
times."

"I wondered which you'd rather see first," explained his escort; "the
art gallery or the natatorium. I'm afraid you'll get tired before
you've seen every thing."

"Suppose we begin with the art-gallery," said he. "There's not much to
see in a swimming-pool."

"Ah, but ours is a very special one," said the lady.--"And some day, if
you'll be very good, and promise not to tell anyone, I'll let you see
my own bath. Perhaps they've told you, I have one in my own apartments,
cut out of a block of the most wonderful green marble."

Montague showed the expected amount of astonishment.

"Of course that gave the dreadful newspapers another chance to gossip,"
said Mrs. Winnie, plaintively. "People found out what I had paid for
it. One can't have anything beautiful without that question being
asked."

And then followed a silence, while Mrs. Winnie waited for him to ask
it. As he forebore to do so, she added, "It was fifty thousand dollars."

They were moving towards the elevator, where a small boy in the
wonderful livery of plush and scarlet stood at attention. "Sometimes,"
she