e Mme.----; is her
name the same as yours?"

"He takes most after his father," muttered my uncle, who was no more
anxious to effect an introduction by proxy, in repeating Mamma's name
aloud, than to bring the two together in the flesh. "He's his father all
over, and also like my poor mother."

"I have not met his father, dear," said the lady in pink, bowing her
head slightly, "and I never saw your poor mother. You will remember it
was just after your great sorrow that we got to know one another."

I felt somewhat disillusioned, for this young lady was in no way
different from other pretty women whom I had seen from time to time at
home, especially the daughter of one of our cousins, to whose house I
went every New Year's Day. Only better dressed; otherwise my uncle's
friend had the same quick and kindly glance, the same frank and friendly
manner. I could find no trace in her of the theatrical appearance
which I admired in photographs of actresses, nothing of the diabolical
expression which would have been in keeping with the life she must lead.
I had difficulty in believing that this was one of 'those women,' and
certainly I should never have believed her one of the 'smart ones' had I
not seen the carriage and pair, the pink dress, the pearly necklace, had
I not been aware, too, that my uncle knew only the very best of them.
But I asked myself how the millionaire who gave her her carriage and her
flat and her jewels could find any pleasure in flinging his money away
upon a woman who had so simple and respectable an appearance. And yet,
when I thought of what her life must be like, its immorality disturbed
me more, perhaps, than if it had stood before me in some concrete and
recognisable form, by its secrecy and invisibility, like the plot of a
novel, the hidden truth of a scandal which had driven out of the home
of her middle-class parents and dedicated to the service of all mankind
which had brought to the flowering-point of her beauty, had raised
to fame or notoriety this woman, the play of whose features, the
intonations of whose voice, like so many others I already knew, made me
regard her, in spite of myself, as a young lady of good family, her who
was no longer of a family at all.

We had gone by this time into the 'study,' and my uncle, who seemed a
trifle embarrassed by my presence, offered her a cigarette.

"No, thank you, dear friend," she said. "You know I only smoke the ones
the Grand Duke sends me. I t