smay to the Countess Helene. The people
of the Western world, the women in particular, knew little of the
bitter spirit permeating the politics of France. The United States had
very knotty problems of her own to discuss in 1859.

"Tah!" continued the dowager, "I startle you! Well, well--it profits
nothing to recite these ills. Many a man, and woman, too, has been put
to death for saying less;--and the exile of my son to remember--yes;
all that! He was Republican--I a Legitimist; I of the old, he of the
new. Republics are good in theory; France might have given it a longer
trial but for this trickster politician, who is called Emperor--by the
grace of God!"

"Do they add 'Defender of the Faith' as our cautious English neighbors
persist in doing?" asked the girlish Marquise with a smile. "Your
country, Madame McVeigh, has no such cant in its constitution. You
have reason to be proud of the great men, the wise, far-seeing men,
who framed those laws."

Mrs. McVeigh smiled and sighed in self-pity.

"How frivolous American women will appear to you, Madame! Few of us
ever read the constitution of our country. I confess I only know the
first line:--'When in the course of human events it becomes
necessary,' but what they thought necessary to do is very vague in my
mind."

Then, catching the glance of the Marquise bright with laughter, she
laughed also without knowing well at what.

"Well; what is it?"

"Only that you are quoting from the Declaration of Independence, and
fancy it the constitution."

"That is characteristic of American women, too," laughed Mrs. McVeigh;
"declarations of independence is one of our creeds. But I shall
certainly be afraid of you, Marquise. At your age the learning and
comparing of musty laws would have been dull work for me. It is the
age for dancing and gay carelessness."

The Marquise smiled assent with her curious, dark eyes, in which amber
lights shown. She had a certain appealing meekness at times--a sweet
deference that was a marked contrast to the aggressiveness with which
she had met Dumaresque in the morning. The Countess Helene, observing
the deprecating manner with which she received the implied praise for
erudition, found herself watching with a keener interest the girl who
had seemed to her a mere pretty book-worm.

"She is more than that," thought the astute worldling. "Alain's widow
has a face for tragedy, the address of an ingenue, and the _tout en
semble_ of a coquette.