coming out second best," remarked
Dumaresque. "I have an errand in the next street; will you come?"

McVeigh assented. They stalked along, chattering and enjoying their
cigars until they reached a florists, where Dumaresque produced a
memorandum and read off a list of blossoms and greenery to be
delivered by a certain date.

"An affair for the hospitals to be held in the home of Madame Dulac,
wife of General Dulac," he explained; "it is to be all very novel, a
bazaar and a ball. Madame is an old friend of my god-mother, the
dowager Marquise de Caron, whom you have met."

McVeigh assented and showed interest.

"We have almost persuaded Madame Alain, her daughter, to preside over
one of the booths. Ah! It will be a place to empty one's pockets; you
must come."

"Not sure about invitations," confessed McVeigh, frankly. "It is a
very exclusive affair, I believe, and a foreigner will be such a
distinctive outsider at such gatherings."

"We will undertake to prevent that," promised Dumaresque, "and in the
interests of charity you will find both dames and demoiselles
wonderfully gracious to even a lonely, unattached man. If you dance
you can win your own place."

"Oh, yes; we all dance in our country; some of us poorly, perhaps;
still, we dance."

"Good! You must come. I am assisting, after a fashion, in planning the
decorations, and I promise to find you some one who is charming, and
who speaks your language delightfully."

There was some further chat. McVeigh promised he would attend unless
his mother had made conflicting engagements. Dumaresque informed him
it was to be a fancy dress affair; uniforms would be just the thing;
and he parted with the American much more pleased with him than in the
salons where they had met heretofore.

Kenneth McVeigh sauntered along the avenue, tall, careless, reposeful.
His expression was one of content, and he smiled as he silently
blessed Loris Dumaresque, who had done him excellent service without
knowing it--had found a method by which he would try the charm of the
third attempt to see the handsome girl who had passed them that day in
the carriage.

He entered the hotel late that night. Paris, in an unofficial way, was
celebrating the victory of Magenta by shouting around bon-fires,
laughing under banners, forming delegations no one remembered, and
making addresses no one listened to.

Late though it was, Mrs. McVeigh had not retired. From a window she
was looking out on