t entered, completely muffled in her hoods of lace.

And there was still no sign of the Minister.

It was, however, a clearly understood, definitely promised arrangement.
Monpavon was to call for him at the club. From time to time the good
Jenkins glanced at his watch, while applauding absently the bouquet of
brilliant notes which the Wauters was pouring forth from her fairy
lips, a bouquet costing three thousand francs, useless, like the other
expenses of the evening, if the duke did not come.

Suddenly the double doors were flung wide open:

"His excellency M. le Duc de Mora!"

A long quiver of excitement welcomed him, a respectful curiosity that
ranged itself in two rows instead of the mobbing crowd that flocked on
the heels of the Nabob.

None better than he knew how to bear himself in society, to walk across
a drawing-room with gravity, to endow futile things with an air of
seriousness, and to treat serious things lightly; that was the epitome
of his attitude in life, a paradoxical distinction. Still handsome,
despite his fifty-six years, with a comeliness compounded of elegance
and proportion, wherein the grace of the dandy was fortified by
something military about the figure and the haughtiness of the face; he
wore with striking effect his black dress-coat, on which, to do honour
to Jenkins, he had pinned a few of his decorations, which he was in the
habit of never wearing except upon official occasions. The reflection
from the linen, from the white cravat, the dull silver of the
decorations, the smoothness of the thin hair now turning gray, enhanced
the pallor of the features, more bloodless than all the bloodless faces
that were to be seen that evening in the Irishman's house.

He had led such a terrible life! Politics, play under all its forms,
from the Stock Exchange to the baccarat-table, and that reputation of a
man successful with women which had to be maintained at all costs. Oh,
this man was a true client of Jenkins; and this princely visit, he owed
it in good sooth to the inventor of those mysterious pills which gave
that fire to his glance, to his whole being that energy so vibrating and
extraordinary.

"My dear duke, permit me to----"

Monpavon, with solemn air and a great sense of his own importance,
endeavoured to effect the presentation so long looked forward to; but
his excellency, preoccupied, seemed not to hear, continued his progress
towards the large drawing-room, borne along by one