many floating plumes, such a
flutter of lace, of flowers and curls, that it would be a real miracle
if any dancer could detect her among those stars. Why, Martial, how is
it that you have not understood her to be the wife of some sous-prefet
from Lippe or Dyle, who has come to try to get her husband promoted?"

"Oh, he will be!" exclaimed the Master of Appeals quickly.

"I doubt it," replied the Colonel of Cuirassiers, laughing. "She seems
as raw in intrigue as you are in diplomacy. I dare bet, Martial, that
you do not know how she got into that place."

The lawyer looked at the Colonel of Cuirassiers with an expression as
much of contempt as of curiosity.

"Well," proceeded Montcornet, "she arrived, I have no doubt, punctually
at nine, the first of the company perhaps, and probably she greatly
embarrassed the Comtesse de Gondreville, who cannot put two ideas
together. Repulsed by the mistress of the house, routed from chair to
chair by each newcomer, and driven into the darkness of this little
corner, she allowed herself to be walled in, the victim of the jealousy
of the other ladies, who would gladly have buried that dangerous beauty.
She had, of course, no friend to encourage her to maintain the place she
first held in the front rank; then each of those treacherous fair ones
would have enjoined on the men of her circle on no account to take out
our poor friend, under pain of the severest punishment. That, my dear
fellow, is the way in which those sweet faces, in appearance so tender
and so artless, would have formed a coalition against the stranger, and
that without a word beyond the question, 'Tell me, dear, do you know
that little woman in blue?'--Look here, Martial, if you care to run the
gauntlet of more flattering glances and inviting questions than you will
ever again meet in the whole of your life, just try to get through the
triple rampart which defends that Queen of Dyle, or Lippe, or Charente.
You will see whether the dullest woman of them all will not be equal
to inventing some wile that would hinder the most determined man from
bringing the plaintive stranger to the light. Does it not strike you
that she looks like an elegy?"

"Do you think so, Montcornet? Then she must be a married woman?"

"Why not a widow?"

"She would be less passive," said the lawyer, laughing.

"She is perhaps the widow of a man who is gambling," replied the
handsome Colonel.

"To be sure; since the peace there are so many