I went out with him, and we found the Countess sitting under one of
the little quince-trees in front of the house. She was drawing a needle
through the piece of embroidery which she had taken from the small
table. She pointed graciously to the chair beside her, and I seated
myself. Mr. Mixter glanced about him, and then sat down in the grass at
her feet. He gazed upward, looking with parted lips from the Countess
to me. "I am sure you speak French," said the Countess, fixing her
brilliant little eyes upon me.

"I do, madam, after a fashion," I answered in the lady's own tongue.

"_Voila!_" she cried most expressively. "I knew it so soon as I looked
at you. You have been in my poor dear country."

"A long time."

"You know Paris?"

"Thoroughly, madam." And with a certain conscious purpose I let my eyes
meet her own.

She presently, hereupon, moved her own and glanced down at Mr. Mixter
"What are we talking about?" she demanded of her attentive pupil.

He pulled his knees up, plucked at the grass with his hand, stared,
blushed a little. "You are talking French," said Mr. Mixter.

"_La belle decouverte!_" said the Countess. "Here are ten months," she
explained to me, "that I am giving him lessons. Don't put yourself out
not to say he's an idiot; he won't understand you."

"I hope your other pupils are more gratifying," I remarked.

"I have no others. They don't know what French is in this place; they
don't want to know. You may therefore imagine the pleasure it is to me
to meet a person who speaks it like yourself." I replied that my own
pleasure was not less; and she went on drawing her stitches through
her embroidery, with her little finger curled out. Every few moments
she put her eyes close to her work, nearsightedly. I thought her a very
disagreeable person; she was coarse, affected, dishonest, and no more a
countess than I was a caliph. "Talk to me of Paris," she went on. "The
very name of it gives me an emotion! How long since you were there?"

"Two months ago."

"Happy man! Tell me something about it What were they doing? Oh, for an
hour of the boulevard!"

"They were doing about what they are always doing,--amusing themselves a
good deal."

"At the theatres, eh?" sighed the Countess. "At the _cafes-concerts_, at
the little tables in front of the doors? _Quelle existence!_ You know I
am a Parisienne, monsieur," she added, "to my fingertips."

"Miss Spencer was mistaken, then," I ventured to rejo