young exquisite a few yards from her threw the end of a cigarette into
the fire with a little sharp decided gesture. Lady Aubrey also pushed
away a cigarette case which lay beside her hand.

Everybody there had the air more or less of an _habitue_ of the house;
and when the conversation began again, the Elsmeres found it very hard,
in spite of certain perfunctory efforts on the part of Madame de
Netteville, to take any share in it.

'Well, I believe the story about Desforets is true,' said the
fair-haired young Apollo, who had thrown away his cigarette, lolling
back in his chair.

Catherine started, the little scene with Rose and Langham in the English
rectory garden flashing incongruously back upon her.

'If you get it from the _Ferret_, my dear Evershed,' said the ex-Tory
minister, Lord Rupert, 'you may put it down as a safe lie. As for me, I
believe she has a much shrewder eye to the main chance.'

'What do you mean?' said the other, raising astonished eyebrows.

'Well, it doesn't _pay_, you know, to write yourself down a fiend--not
quite.'

'What--you think it will affect her audiences? Well, that is a good
joke!' and the young man laughed immoderately, joined by several of the
other guests.

'I don't imagine it will make any difference to you, my good friend,'
returned Lord Rupert imperturbably; 'but the British public haven't got
your nerve. They _may_ take it awkwardly--I don't say they will--when a
woman who has turned her own young sister out of doors at night, in St.
Petersburg, so that ultimately as a consequence the girl dies, comes to
ask them to clap her touching impersonations of injured virtue.'

'What has one to do with an actress's private life, my dear Lord
Rupert?' asked Madame de Netteville, her voice slipping with a smooth
clearness into the conversation, her eyes darting light from under
straight black brows.

'What indeed!' said the young man who had begun the conversation with a
disagreeable enigmatical smile, stretching out his hand for another
cigarette, and drawing it back with a look under his drooped eyelids--a
look of cold impertinent scrutiny--at Catherine Elsmere.

'Ah! well--I don't want to be obtrusively moral--Heaven forbid! But
there is such a thing as destroying the illusion to such an extent that
you injure your pocket. Desforets is doing it--doing it actually in
Paris too.'

There was a ripple of laughter.

'Paris and illusions--_O mon Dieu!_' groaned young Evers