dinner! I can hardly wait for Judy to come home from the studio
to tell her."

Mrs. Brown was equally pleased with her cousin's having remained so
unaffected and looked forward with much pleasure to renewing the
girlhood intimacy, and also to meeting the Marquis d'Ochte, of whom his
wife spoke so enthusiastically as "my Jean," and the son Philippe. She
had some misgivings about the son because the literature of the day does
not paint a young Frenchman in particularly desirable colors as the
companion of girls; but she hoped that the mother's innate good sense
had served to bring up the boy in the proper way. Then Molly and Judy
could meet him as they would any young man from their own country, and
he would understand their easy freedom of manner and of speech,
different, she well knew, from that of the unmarried French girl. She
determined to say nothing to the girls of the difference, as she did not
want them changed or embarrassed by self-consciousness, and she felt
sure of their having breeding and _savoir faire_ to carry them through
any situation with flying colors.

As the marchioness had indicated, she had married before Jean had
succeeded to the estates and indeed before he had any idea of being the
heir presumptive. His uncle, the Marquis d'Ochte, was at the time a
comparatively young man, a widower with a son of twelve; and everyone
expected that he would marry again and perhaps have other sons. Jean
d'Ochte, when she met him, was a rising young journalist, making,
however, but a meager salary. His father was dead. His mother, Madame
d'Ochte, was a very superior woman and recognized Sally Bolling's worth
in spite of the fact that she had but a tiny dot to bestow at her
marriage. She saw her son's infatuation for the American girl and gave
her consent to the marriage, without which, as is the law in France,
they could not have been wed. Sally's alliance gave her the _entree_
into the most exclusive homes of the Faubourg St. Germain but she was
not a whit impressed by it. She took her honors so simply and naturally
that she won the hearts of all her husband's connection and they ended
by applauding the leniency of Madame d'Ochte in permitting the match,
which they had formerly condemned as sentimental.

Jean and his wife spent their first married years living in the simplest
style and Sally learned the economy for which the French are famous.
Then came the windfall of fifty thousand dollars from Aunt Sarah
Ca