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“The lovely Day–that’s what they call her, I believe? I wanted you to talk with her.”

“I find she is the one I’ve met. But she seems to be so different here. I can’t make it out,” said Count Otto.

There was something in his expression that again moved Mrs. Bonnycastle to mirth. “How we do puzzle you Europeans! You look quite bewildered.”

“I’m sorry I look so–I try to hide it. But of course we’re very simple. Let me ask then a simple earnest childlike question. Are her parents also in society?”

“Parents in society? D’ou tombez-vous? Did you ever hear of the parents of a triumphant girl in rose-colour, with a nose all her own, in society?”

“Is she then all alone?” he went on with a strain of melancholy in his voice.

Mrs. Bonnycastle launched at him all her laughter.

“You’re too pathetic. Don’t you know what she is? I supposed of course you knew.”

“It’s exactly what I’m asking you.”

“Why she’s the new type. It has only come up lately. They have had articles about it in the papers. That’s the reason I told Mrs. Steuben to bring her.”

“The new type? WHAT new type, Mrs. Bonnycastle?” he returned pleadingly–so conscious was he that all types in America were new.

Her laughter checked her reply a moment, and by the time she had recovered herself the young lady from Boston, with whom Vogelstein had been talking, stood there to take leave. This, for an American type, was an old one, he was sure; and the process of parting between the guest and her hostess had an ancient elaboration. Count Otto waited a little; then he turned away and walked up to Pandora Day, whose group of interlocutors had now been re-enforced by a gentleman who had held an important place in the cabinet of the late occupant of the presidential chair. He had asked Mrs. Bonnycastle if she were “all alone”; but there was nothing in her present situation to show her for solitary. She wasn’t sufficiently alone for our friend’s taste; but he was impatient and he hoped she’d give him a few words to himself. She recognised him without a moment’s hesitation and with the sweetest smile, a smile matching to a shade the tone in which she said: “I was watching you. I wondered if you weren’t going to speak to me.”

“Miss Day was watching him!” one of the foreign ministers exclaimed; “and we flattered ourselves that her attention was all with us.”

“I mean before,” said the girl, “while I was talking with the President.”

At which the gentlemen began to laugh, one of them remarking that this was the way the absent were sacrificed, even the great; while another put on record that he hoped Vogelstein was duly flattered.

“Oh I was watching the President too,” said Pandora. “I’ve got to watch HIM. He has promised me something.”

“It must be the mission to England,” the judge of the Supreme Court suggested. “A good position for a lady; they’ve got a lady at the head over there.”

“I wish they would send you to my country,” one of the foreign ministers suggested. “I’d immediately get recalled.”

“Why perhaps in your country I wouldn’t speak to you! It’s only because you’re here,” the ex-heroine of the Donau returned with a gay familiarity which evidently ranked with her but as one of the arts of defence. “You’ll see what mission it is when it comes out. But I’ll speak to Count Vogelstein anywhere,” she went on. “He’s an older friend than any right here. I’ve known him in difficult days.”

“Oh yes, on the great ocean,” the young man smiled. “On the watery waste, in the tempest!”

“Oh I don’t mean that so much; we had a beautiful voyage and there wasn’t any tempest. I mean when I was living in Utica. That’s a watery waste if you like, and a tempest there would have been a pleasant variety.”