has told me you are very rich--_une vogue epatante_.... One
would not say it.... But how your ears are pretty!' Cosette glanced
admiringly at the lobe of his left ear.

('Anyhow,' Henry reflected, 'she would insist on me coming to Paris. I
didn't want to come.')

They were alone, and yet not alone. They occupied a 'loge' in the
crammed, gorgeous, noisy Folies-Bergere. But it resembled a box in an
English theatre less than an old-fashioned family pew at the Great Queen
Street Wesleyan Chapel. It was divided from other boxes and from the
stalls and from the jostling promenade by white partitions scarcely as
high as a walking-stick. There were four enamelled chairs in it, and
Henry and Cosette were seated on two of them; the other two were empty.
Tom had led Henry like a sheep to the box, where they were evidently
expected by two excessively stylish young women, whom Tom had introduced
to the overcome Henry as Loulou and Cosette, two artistes of the Theatre
des Capucines. Loulou was short and fair and of a full habit, and spoke
no English. Cosette was tall and slim and dark, and talked slowly, and
with smiles, a language which was frequently a recognisable imitation of
English. She had learnt it, she said, in Ireland, where she had been
educated in a French convent. She had just finished a long engagement at
the Capucines, and in a fortnight she was to commence at the Scala: this
was an off-night for her. She protested a deep admiration for Tom.

Cosette and Loulou and Tom had held several colloquies, in
incomprehensible French that raced like a mill-stream over a weir, with
acquaintances who accosted them on the promenade or in the stalls, and
at length Tom and Loulou had left the 'loge' for a few minutes in order
to accept the hospitality of friends in the great hall at the back of
the auditorium. The new 'revue' seemed to be the very last thing that
they were interested in.

'Don't be afraid,' Tom, departing, had said to Henry. 'She won't eat
you.'

'You leave me to take care of myself,' Henry had replied, lifting his
chin.

Cosette transgressed the English code governing the externals of women
in various particulars. And the principal result was to make the
English code seem insular and antique. She had an extremely large white
hat, with a very feathery feather in it, and some large white roses
between the brim and her black hair. Her black hair was positively
sable, and one single immense lock of it was drawn l