s not mistaken, knew exactly how.

"Put down your hat, Mr. Longmore," she said, "and be polite for once.
You were not at all polite the other day when I asked you that friendly
question about the state of your heart."

"I HAVE no heart--to talk about," he returned with as little grace.

"As well say you've none at all. I advise you to cultivate a little
eloquence; you may have use for it. That was not an idle question of
mine; I don't ask idle questions. For a couple of months now that you've
been coming and going among us it seems to me you've had very few to
answer of any sort."

"I've certainly been very well treated," he still dryly allowed.

His companion waited ever so little to bring out: "Have you never felt
disposed to ask any?"

Her look, her tone, were so charged with insidious meanings as to
make him feel that even to understand her would savour of dishonest
complicity. "What is it you have to tell me?" he cried with a flushed
frown.

Her own colour rose at the question. It's rather hard, when you come
bearing yourself very much as the sibyl when she came to the Roman king,
to be treated as something worse than a vulgar gossip. "I might tell
you, monsieur," she returned, "that you've as bad a ton as any young man
I ever met. Where have you lived--what are your ideas? A stupid one of
my own--possibly!--has been to call your attention to a fact that it
takes some delicacy to touch upon. You've noticed, I suppose, that my
sister-in-law isn't the happiest woman in the world."

"Oh!"--Longmore made short work of it.

She seemed to measure his intelligence a little uncertainly. "You've
formed, I suppose," she nevertheless continued, "your conception of the
grounds of her discontent?"

"It hasn't required much forming. The grounds--or at least a specimen or
two of them--have simply stared me in the face."

Madame Clairin considered a moment with her eyes on him. "Yes--ces
choses-la se voient. My brother, in a single word, has the deplorable
habit of falling in love with other women. I don't judge him; I don't
judge my sister-in-law. I only permit myself to say that in her position
I would have managed otherwise. I'd either have kept my husband's
affection or I'd have frankly done without it. But my sister's an odd
compound; I don't profess to understand her. Therefore it is, in a
measure, that I appeal to you, her fellow countryman. Of course you'll
be surprised at my way of looking at the matter, and