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The day after the festa, the lady, in a simple morning toilet, had moved her table and sewing-chair into the open air. Instead of sewing, she was occupied in furbishing up some old stage jewelry, and her visitor, stretched on an iron bench, calmly puffed a cigar. From his manner, one would imagine him master rather than guest; but that Mademoiselle Milan and a female servant were the sole occupants there is not a doubt.

With the utmost nonchalance, he had ordered a pillow, and, his ambrosial locks buried in its soft depths and his feet raised high above his head, he lounged a modern Apollo, scrutinizing with supercilious indifference the lady’s work. If the cigar-ashes at his side were a criterion, he had been lying there for hours; and if the nervous movements of Mademoiselle were significant, he had been lying there an hour too long. For some minutes the silence was broken only by the jingle of the gaudy ornaments, and then the man exclaimed, “But, ma chere Adrienne, I am short–deuced short. Delay is ruin. How am I to live?”

“Work,” said the lady, curtly.

“There you are again, with your cursed woman’s wisdom! What are you here for? What am I here for?”

Mademoiselle answered, with a shrug, “Judging from your position, I would say, to enjoy your ease; from your language, to annoy me.”

He raised himself to a sitting posture. “Adrienne Milan, do you take me for an idiot?”

“Edgar Fay, you are insulting.”

“Prima donnas of the Alcasar are not usually so sensitive,” broke out the visitor, with a laugh.

The woman sprang to her feet, and in the haste overturned the table with its glittering baubles.

“Go! go!” she fiercely exclaimed. “The compact between you and me is sacred. Another word, and I reveal all.”

White as any ghost, he started up, and, without uttering a sound, slunk away.

Trembling with rage and mortification, Mademoiselle Milan sunk into a seat; but hers was not a nature to dwell long on trouble. With a woman’s spirit of order, she commenced picking up the finery scattered around her, and putting it away. Among other things was a box of quartz diamonds, which, being small, flew in all directions. All within view were collected, and she turned to go.

“There are several lying near that flower-pot in the corner.”

The lady looked up. Standing on a chair on the other side, and leaning lazily over the wall, was Armand Dupleisis.

CHAPTER III.

“Has Flora proved more attractive than Thalia?”

Armand Dupleisis, long since become acquainted, stood examining a bouquet of roses and geraniums in the music-room of Mademoiselle Milan, and the lady was seated near him, trifling with the keys of her piano.

“I gaze on beauty, mademoiselle, to accustom my eyes to divinity.”

“Really! Were it not for his gigantic proportions, one would suppose man was reared in an atmosphere of compliment.”

“You mistake us. Though not a favorite diet, in Pekin we devour rice with the gusto of the most polished Celestial.”

“I bow to your sincerity. Women, then, are to be talked to of birds, and flowers, and stars, and fed on water-cresses?”

“Women, mademoiselle, make men apt scholars in the art of pleasing. I have studied much.”

“How singular!” rejoined the lady. “I should never have detected it.”

“True art, mademoiselle, lies in its concealment. My life has been one of concealment.”

“Now you pique my curiosity,” she replied. “Do let me learn the ‘veritable historie.'”

The smile on Mademoiselle Milan’s face showed that the interest was feigned, but the grim look about Dupleisis’ mouth proved him conscious of it. A man without an object would have changed the subject at once; but Dupleisis had an object, and did not.

“I was ushered into this land of hope and sunny smiles with scarcely any other patrimony than a name.”

“What limited resources!” ejaculated the lady, with a slight sneer.

“While blushing with the consciousness of my virgin cravat, I went to Paris, that sacred ark, which saves from shipwreck all the wretched of the provinces if but crowned with a ray of intellect.”