t he'll see it's urgent. Then you can sign the telegram with your
own. Cousin Cherry! Stuff!"

* * * * *

Later that day Madame de Melcourt was making a confession to Rodney
Temple.

"Oui, mon bon Rodney. It was love at first sight. The thing hadn't
happened to me for years."

"Had it been in the habit of happening?"

"In the habit of happening--that's too much to say. I may have had a
little toquade from time to time--I don't say no--of an innocence!--or
nearly of an innocence!--Mais que voulez-vous?--a woman in my
position!--a widow since I was so high!--and exposed to the most
flattering attentions. You know nothing about it over here. L'amour est
l'enfant de Boheme, as the song says, and, whatever you can say for
Waverton and Cambridge and Boston, you'll admit--"

He leaned back in his rocking-chair with a laugh. "One does the best one
can, Vic. We're children of opportunity as well as enfants de Boheme. If
your chances have been more generous, and I presume more tempting, than
ours, it isn't kind of you to come back and taunt us."

"Don't talk about tempting, Rodney. You can't imagine how tiresome those
men become--always on the hunt for money--always trying to find a wife
who'll support them without their having to work. I speak of the good
people, of course. With the bourgeoisie it's different. They work and
take care of their families like other people. Only they don't count. If
I hadn't money--they'd slam the door on me like that." She indicated the
violence of the act by gesture. "As it is, they smother me. There are
three of them at Melcourt-le-Danois at this present moment--Anne Marie
de Melcourt's two boys and one girl. They're all waiting for me to
supply the funds with which they're to make rich marriages. Is it any
wonder that I look upon what's done for my own niece as so much saved?
Henry's getting into such a hole seemed to me providential--gives me the
chance to snatch something away from them before they--and when it's to
go ultimately to _him_--"

"The young fellow you've taken such a fancy to?"

"You'd have taken a fancy to him, too, if you'd known only men who make
it a trade to ask all and give next to nothing in return. You'd be
smitten to the core by a man who asks nothing and offers all, if he were
as ugly as a gargoyle. But when he takes the form of a blond Hercules,
with eyes blue as the myosotis, and a mustache--mais une moustache!--and
with no ide