had done--but the trained coquette was equal to
the task, and she brought him to the climax just as she had brought his
predecessor. And there was the one little embrace granted, and there was
a rustle of skirts, and the click of a door-latch, and Gertrude's voice
said, 'You will stay _now_ Ricardo?' and Ricardo groaned. Then the door
was closed, and there was silence. Then Ricardo groaned again, and
Paul heard his disordered footsteps as he paced the room. The unwilling
listener returned to the cane-chair and stretched himself upon it with
great stealth, and feigned sleep in case of contingencies. But after
five dreary minutes young Mr. Janes withdrew, and the way of escape was
open.

Paul made his way to the drawing-room, and found there the Knickerbocker
lady and the demure Countess, with whom he had already a slight but
agreeable acquaintance. He had had time to recover his self-possession,
and though he wished himself a hundred miles away, he did his best to
set the kite of conversation flying. He was making an attempt in his
somewhat halting French to tell the story of his delay when Gertrude
entered, and he told the tale to her, leaving her to translate it. His
narrative was so vivacious that she trilled with laughter at it, and
broke in upon it with a rapid paraphrase in French here and there, so
that she and the Countess and the historian were all laughing heartily
together when Mr. Janes came in with a sombre countenance, and made so
funereal an effort to join in the mirth that Paul was fiercely tickled.
And whilst he made a comedy of the morning's accident for her amusement,
he was thinking all the while, 'You heartless, cruel, dangerous little
jade!' and thinking it, too, with a real savagery of hatred. 'How
many have you betrayed,' he asked in his heart 'To how many hungers of
passion deliberately awakened have you offered that heart of stone?'

The Baroness knew him mainly on the sentimental side, but that evening
he launched out as a raconteur, and was gay and brilliant. Even Mr.
Janes was awakened to sporadic laughter at the dinner-table, where they
sat by preconcerted arrangement without the formality of evening-dress,
and fared admirably from the _hors d'oeuvres_ to the coffee--a flawless
meal. And dinner being over, they drove away under a noble moon to the
railway-station, and bowled back to Paris.

Paul, still with an air of gaiety, begged Gertrude to accord him ten
minutes on the following day.