ed.

"You two seem to be having a very good time."

"Oh, we're hitting it off fairly well," said Mr. Spence, no doubt for the
benefit of the Vicomte. And he added in a confidential tone, "Aren't we?"

"Not on the subject of the Vicomte," she replied promptly. "I like him. I
like French people."

"What!" he exclaimed, halting in his steps, "you don't take that man
seriously?"

"I haven't known him long enough to take him seriously," said Honora.

"There's a blindness about women," he declared, "that's incomprehensible.
They'll invest in almost any old thing if the certificates are
beautifully engraved. If you were a man, you wouldn't trust that
Frenchman to give you change for five dollars."

"French people," proclaimed Honora, "have a light touch of which we
Americans are incapable. We do not know how to relax."

"A light touch!" cried Mr. Spence, delightedly, "that about describes the
Vicomte."

"I'm sure you do him an injustice," said Honora.

"We'll see," said Mr. Spence. "Mrs. Holt is always picking up queer
people like that. She's noted for it." He turned to her. How did you
happen to come here?"

"I came with Susan," she replied, amusedly, "from boarding-school at
Sutcliffe."

"From boarding-school!"

She rather enjoyed his surprise.

"You don't mean to say you are Susan's age?"

"How old did you think I was?" she asked.

"Older than Susan," he said surveying her.

"No, I'm a mere child, I'm nineteen."

"But I thought--" he began, and paused and lighted another cigarette.

Her eyes lighted mischievously.

"You thought that I had been out several years, and that I'd seen a good
deal of the world, and that I lived in New York, and that it was strange
you didn't know me. But New York is such an enormous place I suppose one
can't know everybody there."

"And--where do you come from, if I may ask?" he said.

"St. Louis. I was brought to this country before I was two years old,
from France. Mrs. Holt brought me. And I have never been out of St. Louis
since, except to go to Sutcliffe. There you have my history. Mrs. Holt
would probably have told it to you, if I hadn't."

"And Mrs. Holt brought you to this country?"

Honora explained, not without a certain enjoyment.

"And how do you happen to be here?" she demanded. "Are you a member of
--of the menagerie?"

He had the habit of throwing back his head when he laughed. This, of
course, was a thing to laugh over, and now he deemed it audaci