d dash across the room
for a word with the girl. Discouraged by some laughing answer flung over
her shoulder, he almost bumps against the duchess. Horror! She speaks to
him quite eagerly. She puts a question. He replies. She bends her head
near to him. They walk slowly out of the room, talking, talking. All is
up with Lys d'Angely! The next thing that Meddlesome Matty of a
duchess will do, is to wire Cousin Catherine Milvaine. Crash!
thunder--lightning--hail!--Monsieur Charretier on my track again.

* * * * *

I resolved, as I saw myself lying shattered at my own feet, to pick up
the bits and say nothing to Jack, lest he should blame his own
inadvertent dropping of my name for all present and future mischief.
Being a man, he can see things only with his eyes; and as he happened to
be looking at me, he missed the pantomime at the other end of the room.
I was looking at him too, but of course that didn't prevent me from
seeing other things; and while I was chatting with him, and wondering
how long it might be before the thunderbolt (Monsieur Charretier) should
fall, I received another invitation to dance. This time it was from a
delightful old boy who looked sixty and felt twenty-one.

He was ruddy-brown, with tight gray curls on his head, and deep dimples
in his cheeks. If anyone had told me that he was not an English admiral
I should have known it was a fib.

"I hope you aren't engaged for this next waltz?" said he. "I should like
very much to have it with you." And he spoke as nicely as he would to a
young girl of his own world, although he must have heard from someone
that I was a lady's maid.

I glanced at Jack, but evidently he approved of admirals as partners for
his sister. He kept himself in the background, smiling benevolently, and
I skipped away with my brown old sailor, as the music for the dance
began.

"Heard you spoke English," said he, encircling my Directoire waist with
the arm of a sea-going Hercules, "otherwise I shouldn't have had the
courage to come up and speak to you."

I laughed. "A Dreadnought afraid of a fishing-smack!"

"My word, if you were a fishin'-smack, my little friend, you wouldn't
lack for fish to catch," chuckled the old gentleman, who was waltzing
like an elderly angel--as all sailors do. Now, if Bertie had said what
he said, I should have been offended, but coming from the admiral it
cheered me up.

"You _are_ an admiral, aren't you?" I was bo