and's sister," Lydia corrected him, and presented the newcomer
in one phrase.

"Isn't she a sly, designing creature, Mr. Buisine?" cried Madeleine, in
her usual state of hearty enjoyment of her situation. "You haven't met
many as up-and-coming, have you now?"

"I do not know the meaning of your adjective, Mademoiselle; but it is
true that I have met few like your brother's wife."

"I'm not Mademoiselle!" Madeleine was greatly amused at the idea.

The lecturer looked at her with a return to his enigmatic smile of the
earlier afternoon. "I never saw a person who looked more unmarried than
yourself, Mademoiselle," he persisted.

"Oh, we American women know the secret of not looking married," said
Madeleine proudly.

"You do indeed," said the Frenchman with the manner of gallantry. "All
of you look unmarried."

Lydia rose to go. The lecturer looked at her, his eyes softening, and
made a silent gesture of farewell.

He turned back to Madeleine. "But I _am_," she assured him, pleased and
flattered with the centering of their persiflage on herself. She made a
gesture toward Lydia, disappearing down the stairs. "I'm as much married
as _she_ is!"

M. Buisine continued smiling. "That is quite, quite incredible," he told
her.

CHAPTER XXIX

"... in tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be. Passions spin the plot."

"Say, Lydia," said Madeleine with her bluff good humor, coming into the
house a few days after the French lecture, "say, I'm awfully sorry I
told Paul! I never supposed he'd go and get mad. It was just my fool
notion of being funny."

Lydia was dusting the balustrade, her back to her visitor. She tingled
all through at this speech, and for an instant went on with her work,
trying to decide if she should betray the fact that she knew nothing of
the incident to which Madeleine's remark seemed to refer, or if she
should, as she had done so many times already, conceal under a silence
her ignorance of what her husband told other people. She never learned
of matters pertaining to Paul's profession except from chance remarks of
his business associates. He had not even told her, until questioned,
about his great inspiration for rearranging the territory covered in
that region by his company; a plan that must have engrossed his thoughts
and fired his enthusiasm during months of apparently common life with
his wife. And Paul had been genuinely surprised, and a little put out at
her desire to know of it.