more than that
to them.

Gervase does not make any confidences: he only tells her things which
amuse her and reveal much about her acquaintances, nothing about
himself. He smokes some of her favorite cigarettes, praises some new
china, suggests an alteration in the arrangement of the fans, and makes
critical discourses _a propos_ of her collection of snuff-boxes.

When he is going away, he lingers a moment intently looking at a
patch-box of vernis Martin, and says, with studied carelessness, "Dolly,
tell me, when did you make the acquaintance of Madame Sabaroff?"

"Last year, at Cannes: why do you want to know? She came and stayed with
us at Orme last Easter. Is she not perfectly charming?"

"Very good-looking," says Gervase, absently. "You don't know anything
about her, then?"

"Know?" repeats his hostess. "What should I know? What everybody does, I
suppose. I met her first at the Duchesse de Luynes'. You can't possibly
mean that there can be anything--anything----"

"Oh, no," replies Gervase; but it produces on his questioner the same
effect as if he had said, "Oh, yes."

"How odious men are! such scandal-mongers," says Lady Usk, angrily.
"Talk of _our_ 'damning with faint praise' There is nothing comparable
to the way in which a man destroys a woman's reputation just by raising
his eyebrows or twisting his moustache."

"I have no moustache to twist, and am sure there is no reputation which
I wish to destroy," says her cousin.

"Then why do you ask me where I made her acquaintance?"

"My dear Dolly! Surely the most innocent and general sort of question
ever on the lips of any human being!"

"Possibly; not in the way you said it, however; and when one knows that
you were a great deal in Russia, it suggests five hundred things,--five
thousand things: and of course one knows he was shot in a duel about
her, and I believe people have talked."

"I have never helped them to talk. When do they not talk?"

And beyond this she cannot prevail upon him to go: he pretends that the
Princess Sabaroff is beyond all possibility of any approach of calumny,
but the protestation produces on her the impression that he could tell
her a great deal wholly to the contrary if he chose.

"She certainly was staying with Madame de Luynes," she insists.

"Who ever said the lady might not stay with the Archbishop of
Canterbury?" replies Gervase.

She is irritated and vexed.

Xenia Sabaroff is her idol of the moment, and if he