slap to his knee. "I would marry a
Japanese, if she pleased me," he affirmed.

"We had better confine ourselves to Europe," said Mrs. Tristram. "The
only thing is, then, that the person be in herself to your taste?"

"She is going to offer you an unappreciated governess!" Tristram
groaned.

"Assuredly. I won't deny that, other things being equal, I should prefer
one of my own countrywomen. We should speak the same language, and
that would be a comfort. But I am not afraid of a foreigner. Besides, I
rather like the idea of taking in Europe, too. It enlarges the field
of selection. When you choose from a greater number, you can bring your
choice to a finer point!"

"You talk like Sardanapalus!" exclaimed Tristram.

"You say all this to the right person," said Newman's hostess. "I happen
to number among my friends the loveliest woman in the world. Neither
more nor less. I don't say a very charming person or a very estimable
woman or a very great beauty; I say simply the loveliest woman in the
world."

"The deuce!" cried Tristram, "you have kept very quiet about her. Were
you afraid of me?"

"You have seen her," said his wife, "but you have no perception of such
merit as Claire's."

"Ah, her name is Claire? I give it up."

"Does your friend wish to marry?" asked Newman.

"Not in the least. It is for you to make her change her mind. It will
not be easy; she has had one husband, and he gave her a low opinion of
the species."

"Oh, she is a widow, then?" said Newman.

"Are you already afraid? She was married at eighteen, by her parents, in
the French fashion, to a disagreeable old man. But he had the good taste
to die a couple of years afterward, and she is now twenty-five."

"So she is French?"

"French by her father, English by her mother. She is really more English
than French, and she speaks English as well as you or I--or rather much
better. She belongs to the very top of the basket, as they say here.
Her family, on each side, is of fabulous antiquity; her mother is the
daughter of an English Catholic earl. Her father is dead, and since her
widowhood she has lived with her mother and a married brother. There is
another brother, younger, who I believe is wild. They have an old hotel
in the Rue de l'Universite, but their fortune is small, and they make a
common household, for economy's sake. When I was a girl I was put into a
convent here for my education, while my father made the tour of Europe.
It was