pains of describing them. The
reader knows what Sevres and Aubusson, St. Gobain, Barbedienne,
Fourdinois, Jeanseline, Tahan, and the rest, can do for a first floor
within a stone's throw of the Boulevard des Italiens. The fashion in all
its most striking aspects is here. The presents lie thick as autumn
leaves. The bonne says you might fill a portmanteau with madame's fans.
Bertram is recognised by a dozen ladies at once. The lady of the house
receives me with the lowest curtsey. No ambassadress could be more
_gracieuse_. The toilettes are amazing. It is early, after all Bertram's
impatience. The state is that of a duchesse for the present. Bertram
leaves me and is lost in the crowd. The conversation is measured and
orderly. The dancing begins, and I figure in the quadrille of honour. I
am giving my partner--a dark-eyed, vivacious lady--an ice, when I am
tapped upon the shoulder by Cosmo Bertram. Bertram has a lady on his
arm. He turns to her, saying--

"Permit me to present my friend to you, Madame Trefoil----"

"What! Mrs. Daker!" I cried.

Mrs. Daker's still sweet eyes fell upon me; and she shook my hand; and
by her commanding calmness smothered my astonishment, so that the
bystanders should not see it.

Later in the evening she said--passing me in the crowd--"Come and see
me."

I did not--I could not--next morning, tell Lucy nor Mrs. Rowe.

CHAPTER XIII.

AT BOULOGNE-SUR-MER.

I had an unfortunate friend at Boulogne in the year 1865--then and many
years before. He lived on the ramparts in the upper town; had put on
that shabby military air, capped with a naval _couvre-chef_ (to use a
Paris street word that is expressive, as street words often are), which
distinguishes the British inhabitant of Boulogne-sur-mer; and was the
companion of a group of majors and skippers, sprinkled with commercial
men of erratic book-keeping tendencies. He had lost tone. He took me to
his club; nothing more than a taproom, reserved to himself and men with
whom he would not have exchanged a cigar light in London. The jokes were
bad and flat. A laid-up captain of an old London boat--sad old rascal
was he!--led the conversation. Who was drunk last night? How did the
Major get the key into the lock? Who paid for Todger's last go? "My
word," said I, to my friend, who had liquored himself out of one of the
snuggest civil berths I know, "how you can spend your time with those
blackguards, surpasses my comprehension." They amus