one, 'your name is known to
everybody--or, at least, to everyone who is worth knowing. Haven't we
all been going wild in London and New York about your last comedy, and
isn't your portrait in the photographers' windows everywhere?'

Paul was young, and therefore, if not vain, at least accessible to the
assaults of vanity, and he blushed to the ears with pleasure. He had
not noticed until the moment when the lady set her thickly-jewelled hand
upon it that a little silver bell was placed at her side. She touched
it, and her maid entered, and at a murmured aside retired, returning in
a moment with a filigree card-case.

'That is my name,' said the lady; 'you may not have heard it before.'

There was so complete a certainty of recognition in her voice and manner
that Paul, though a very poor courtier indeed, bowed as he read the
card, and murmured that everybody knew the name of Madame la Baronne de
Wyeth.

This, as it turned out, was destined to embarrass him a little; but
Madame was graciously communicative, and he was not long in learning
that she was the authoress of a volume of poems which bore the title 'Le
Cour Soupir.' She would be proud and delighted, she told him, to have
his judgment alike on the original work and its rendition in French,
which was also the labour of her own hands.

'You see, Mr. Armstrong,' she said, 'I was born in Paris, though of
American parentage, and I have lived there nearly all my life, so that I
am really and truly quite bilingual. French and English are exactly one
and the same to me, so far as facility of expression goes; and I did not
care to entrust the expression of my most intimate and sacred thoughts
into a stranger's hands. To appeal to the readers of French and English
is to appeal to the whole world of intellect. Perhaps that is not a very
modest desire; but it is mine, Mr. Armstrong, as I think it must be
that of all those who are conscious of great thoughts. By the way,' she
asked, with a comprehensive glance around the table, 'do any of these
gentlemen speak English?'

'Not a word,' Paul answered.

'If you are quite sure of that, Mr. Armstrong,' said the lady, 'we can
pursue our talk in peace; but there is nothing so disconcerting as to
dread an eavesdropper when one is exchanging confidences.'

Paul had not, so far, begun to exchange confidences, and he rather
wondered in his own bourgeois mind if this fascinating lady were
offering him a challenge to a flirtation.