sistent as it may appear when one remembers her avowed fear
of discovery, yet from the moment that suspicion entered her mind the
charm was gone from the blossoms and the days to follow, and she felt
for the first time a resentment towards Monsieur Incognito.

Her reason told her this was an inevitable consequence, through
resentment forgetfulness would come.

But her heart told her--?

Her presence at the charitable fete held by Madame la General at the
Hotel Dulac was her first response, in a social way to the invitations
of her Parisian acquaintances. A charity one might support without in
any way committing oneself to further social plunges. She expected to
feel shy and strange; she expected to be bored. But since Maman wished
it so much--!

There is nothing so likely to banish shyness as success. The young
Marquise could not but be conscious that she attracted attention,
and that the most popular women of the court who had been pleased to
show their patronage by attendance, did not in the least eclipse
her own less pretentious self. People besieged Madame Dulac for
introductions, and to her own surprise the debutante found herself
enjoying all the gay nothings, the jests, the bright sentences
tossed about her and forming a foundation for compliments delicately
veiled, and the flattering by word or glance that was as the breath
of life to those people of the world.

She was dressed in white of medieval cut. Heavy white silk cord was
knotted about the slender waist and touched the embroidered hem. The
square neck had also the simple finish of cord and above it was the
one bit of color; a flat necklace of etruscan gold fitted closely
about the white throat, holding alternate rubies and pearls in their
curiously wrought settings. On one arm was a bracelet of the same
design; and the linked fillet above her dark hair gleamed, also, with
the red of rubies.

It was the age of tarletan and tinsel, of delicate zephyrs and
extremes in butterfly effects. Hoop-skirts were persisted in, despite
the protests of art and reason; so, the serenity of this dress,
fitting close as a habit, and falling in soft straight folds with a
sculpturesque effect, and with the brown-eyed Italian face above it,
created a sensation.

Dumaresque watched her graciously accepting homage as a matter of
course, and smiled, thinking of his prophecy that she would be
magnificent at twenty-five;--she was so already.

Some women near him commente