me, _n'est ce pas_, a
little house in Mayfair?" she said, turning to another of her train.

"Hung with rose-coloured curtains and pink glass in the windows,
according to your orders, Contessa," said the gentleman appealed to.

"How good it is to have a friend! but those curtains will be terrible,"
said the Contessa, with a shiver, "if it were not that I carry with me a
few little things in a great box."

"Oh, my dear Contessa, how many things you must have picked up!" cried
Lady Anastasia. "That peep into your boudoir made me sick with envy;
those Eastern embroideries, those Persian rugs! They have furnished me
with a lovely paragraph for my paper, and it is such a delightful
original idea to carry about one's pet furniture like one's dresses. It
will become quite the fashion when it is known. And how I shall long to
see that little house in Mayfair!"

The Contessa smiled upon Lady Anastasia as she smiled upon the male
friends that surrounded her. Her paper and her paragraphs were not to be
despised, and those little mysterious intimations about the new beauty
which it delighted her to make. Madame di Forno-Populo turned to
Montjoie afterwards with a little wave of the hand. "You are going?" she
said; "how sad for us! we shall have no song to make us gay to-night.
But come and you shall sing to us in Mayfair."

"Countess, you are only laughing at me. But I shall come, don't you
know," said Montjoie, "whether you mean it or not."

The company, who were so much interested in this conversation, did not
observe the preoccupied looks of the master and mistress of the house,
although to some of the gentlemen the gravity of Sir Tom was apparent
enough. And not much wonder that he should be grave. Even the men who were
most easy in their own code looked with a certain severity and
astonishment upon him who had opened his door to the adventuress-Contessa,
of whom they all judged the worst, without even the charitable
acknowledgment which her enemy the Dowager had made, that there was
nothing in her past history bad enough to procure her absolute expulsion
from society. The men who crowded round her when she appeared, who
flattered and paid their court to her, and even took a little credit to
themselves as intimates of the siren, were one and all of opinion that to
bring her into his house was discreditable to Sir Tom. They were even a
little less respectful to Lucy for not knowing or finding out the quality
of her guest.