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“I should not come otherwise, dear,” said Miss Helen with equal frankness. But she played and sang very charmingly to the fashionable assembly in the Champs Elysees,–so charmingly, indeed, that Miss de Laine patronizingly expatiated upon her worth and her better days in confidence to some of the guests.

“A most deserving creature,” said Miss de Laine to the dowager duchess of Soho, who was passing through Paris on her way to England; “you would hardly believe that Poppa knew her father when he was one of the richest men in South Carolina.”

“Your father seems to have been very fortunate,” said the duchess quietly, “and so are YOU. Introduce me.”

This not being exactly the reply that Miss de Laine expected, she momentarily hesitated: but the duchess profited by it to walk over to the piano and introduce herself. When she rose to go she invited Helen to luncheon with her the next day. “Come early, my dear, and we’ll have a long talk.” Helen pointed out hesitatingly that she was practically a guest of the de Laines. “Ah, well, that’s true, my dear; then you may bring one of them with you.”

Helen went to the luncheon, but was unaccompanied. She had a long talk with the dowager. “I am not rich, my dear, like your friends, and cannot afford to pay ten napoleons for a song. Like you I have seen ‘better days.’ But this is no place for you, child, and if you can bear with an old woman’s company for a while I think I can find you something to do.” That evening Helen left for England with the duchess, a piece of “ingratitude, indelicacy, and shameless snobbery,” which Miss de Laine was never weary of dilating upon. “And to think I introduced her, though she was a professional!”

*****

It was three years after. Paris, reviving under the republic, had forgotten Helen and the American colony; and the American colony, emigrating to more congenial courts, had forgotten Paris.

It was a bleak day of English summer when Helen, standing by the window of the breakfast-room at Hamley Court, and looking over the wonderful lawn, kept perennially green by humid English skies, heard the practical, masculine voice of the duchess in her ear at the same moment that she felt the gentle womanly touch of her hand on her shoulder.

“We are going to luncheon at Moreland Hall to-day, my dear.”

“Why, we were there only last week!” said Helen.

“Undoubtedly,” returned the duchess dryly, “and we may luncheon there next week and the next following. And,” she added, looking into her companion’s gray eyes, “it rests with YOU to stay there if you choose.”

Helen stared at her protector.

“My dear,” continued the duchess, slipping her arm around Helen’s waist, “Sir James has honored ME–as became my relations to YOU–with his confidences. As you haven’t given me YOURS I suppose you have none, and that I am telling you news when I say that Sir James wishes to marry you.”

The unmistakable astonishment in the girl’s eye satisfied the duchess even before her voice.

“But he scarcely knows me or anything of me!” said the young girl quickly.

“On the contrary, my dear, he knows EVERYTHING about you. I have been particular in telling him all I know–and some things even YOU don’t know and couldn’t tell him. For instance, that you are a very nice person. Come, my dear, don’t look so stupefied, or I shall really think there’s something in it that I don’t know. It’s not a laughing nor a crying matter yet–at present it’s only luncheon again with a civil man who has three daughters and a place in the county. Don’t make the mistake, however, of refusing him before he offers–whatever you do afterwards.”

“But”–stammered Helen.

“But–you are going to say that you don’t love him and have never thought of him as a husband,” interrupted the duchess; “I read it in your face,–and it’s a very proper thing to say.”