When the two women were within a few feet of each other, and before the American Minister could say “Mrs. Stanhope,” they each gave a little cry of recognition, and it was the younger one who first regained her composure and extended her hand. She stood there, flushed and smiling, the lights falling on her dark hair and gleaming shoulders, making of her, as the newspaper man had said, one of “Goodrich’s girls.” The childish look had gone out of her eyes, and a little gleam of conscious triumph was in them. There was just a shade of coldness, almost of condescension, in her manner. While the Comte was looking from one to the other, in a rather mystified way, and the American Minister was saying, “Why, I didn’t know--I thought--” Mrs. Stanhope’s mind was running quickly back to her first meeting with the girl before her, and she could only remember, in a confused sort of way, what this girl had once been like. And so they stood for a moment--it seemed an interminably long time to the men--looking a little constrainedly at each other and smiling vaguely. But the older woman quickly recovered herself. She had no notion of being outdone [Illustration: WHEN THE TWO WOMEN WERE WITHIN A FEW FEET OF EACH OTHER] by the girl before her, and spoke brightly. “I did not recognize you! How stupid of me! But you see the ‘Beatrice’ confused me, and then the French way everyone has of pronouncing H-a-r-m-ö-n completely put me off the track!” She tried to be very friendly, and the young girl smiled and looked easily--the newspaper man thought almost defiantly--at her, but it was plain to the three onlookers that in some inscrutable way the meeting had been unfortunate, and they each felt relieved, in an inexplicable fashion, when dinner was announced and the snowy, gleaming length of damask and silver and wax lights stretched between the two women. * * * * * That night the Comte thought a good deal about the reception of his _fiancée_ by the woman he had once loved, and decided that the American woman was a trifle _exigeante_, and wondered whether Mrs. Stanhope had really expected him never to marry. The American Minister confided to his wife that he was disappointed in Eva Stanhope, and that she had always appeared so free from vanity and so superior to the little meannesses of women that he was very much surprised at the way she had acted. The newspaper man, being exceedingly wise in his generation, smoked three cigars over it on the way to his hotel, and then--gave it up. THE GENIUS OF BOWLDER BLUFF