oom
in Brook Street was the Baron Claude de Chauxville, Baron of Chauxville
and Chauxville le Duc, in the Province of Seine-et-Marne, France,
attache to the French Embassy to the Court of St. James; before men a
rising diplomatist, before God a scoundrel. This gentleman remained when
the other visitors had left, and Miss Maggie Delafield, seeing his
intention of prolonging a visit of which she had already had sufficient,
made an inadequate excuse and left the room.

Miss Delafield, being a healthy-minded young English person of that
simplicity which is no simplicity at all, but merely simple-heartedness,
had her own ideas of what a man should be, and M. de Chauxville had the
misfortune to fall short of those ideas. He was too epigrammatic for
her, and beneath the brilliancy of his epigram she felt at times the
presence of something dark and nauseous. Her mental attitude toward him
was contemptuous and perfectly polite. With the reputation of possessing
a dangerous fascination--one of those reputations which can only emanate
from the man himself--M. de Chauxville neither fascinated nor
intimidated Miss Delafield. He therefore disliked her intensely. His
vanity was colossal, and when a Frenchman is vain he is childishly so.

M. de Chauxville watched the door close behind Miss Delafield with a
queer smile. Then he turned suddenly on his heels and faced Mrs. Sydney
Bamborough.

"Your cousin," he said, "is a typical Englishwoman--she only conceals
her love."

"For you?" enquired Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.

The baron shrugged his shoulders.

"Possibly. One can never tell. She conceals it very well if it exists.
However, I am indifferent. The virtue of the violet is its own reward,
perhaps, for the rose always wins."

He crossed the room toward Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, who was standing near
the mantelpiece. Her left hand was hanging idly by her side. He took the
white fingers and gallantly raised them to his lips, but before they had
reached that fount of truth and wisdom she jerked her hand away.

M. de Chauxville laughed--the quiet, assured laugh of a man who has read
in books that he who is bold enough can win any woman, and believes it.
He was of those men who treat and speak of women as a class--creatures
to be dealt with successfully according to generality and maxim. It is a
singular thing, by the way, that men as a whole continue to disbelieve
in a woman's negative--singular, that is, when one reflects that the
m