Countess Helene. "Were
you actually--conversing--with that--demi-mondaine?"

"My dear Marquise!" purred Madame Choudey, "when she does not even
_pretend_ to be respectable!"

"It is because she does not pretend that I spoke with her. Honesty
should receive some notice."

"Honesty! Good heavens!" cried Madame Ampere, who had not yet spoken,
but who expressed horror by her eyes, "where then do you find your
standards for such judgment?"

"Now, listen!" and the Marquise turned to the three with a quizzical
smile, "if Kora lived exactly the same life morally, but was a ruler
of the fashionable world, instead of the other one; if she wore a
crown of state instead of the tinsel of the varieties, you would not
exclaim if she addressed me."

"Oh, I must protest, Marquise," began Madame Ampere in shocked
remonstrance, but the Marquise smiled and stopped her.

"Yesterday," she said slowly, "I saw you in conversation with a man
who has the panels of his carriage emblazoned with the Hydrangea--also
called the Hortensia."

The shocked lady looked uncomfortable.

"What then? since it was the Emperor's brother."

"Exactly; the brother of the Emperor, and both of them the sons of a
mother beside whom beautiful Kora is a thing of chastity."

"The children could not help the fact that they were all half-brothers,"
laughed the Countess Helene.

"But this so-called Duke could help parading the doubtful honor of his
descent; yet who fails to return his bow? And I have yet to learn that
his mother was ignored by the ladies of her day. Those Hortensias on
his carriage are horrible to me; they are an attempt to exalt in a
queen the immorality condemned in a subject."

"Ah! You make my head swim with your theories," confessed the
Countess. "How do you find time to study them all?"

"They require no study; one meets them daily in the street or court.
The difficulty is to cease thinking of them--to enjoy a careless life
when justice is always calling somewhere for help."

"I refuse to be annoyed by the calls, yet am comfortable," said Madame
Choudey. "The people who imagine they hear justice calling have had,
too often, to follow the calls into exile."

"That is true," agreed her friend; "take care Marquise! Your theories
are very interesting, but, truly, you are a revolutionist."

Their little battle of words did not prevent them parting with smiles
and all pleasantry. But the Countess Biron, to whose house the
Marquise was