Miss Briggs, a small, dark, elderly and animated person, immensely rich and full of worldly wisdom, wondered why Lady Sellingworth had come over to Paris, was told “clothes,” and smilingly accepted the explanation. She knew Lady Sellingworth very well, and, being extremely sharp and intuitive, realized at once that clothes had nothing to do with this sudden visit. A voice within her said: “It’s a man!” And presently the man came into the restaurant, accompanied by the eternal old woman in the black wig. Now Caroline Briggs had an enormous and cosmopolitan acquaintance. She was the sort of woman who knows wealthy Greeks, Egyptian pashas, Turkish princesses, and wonderful exotic personages from Brazil, Persia, Central America and the Indies. She gave parties which were really romantic, which had a flavour, as someone had said, of the novels of Ouida brought thoroughly up to date. Lady Sellingworth had been to some of them, and had not forgotten them. And it had occurred to her that if anyone she knew was acquainted with the brown man, that person might be Caroline Briggs. She had, therefore, come to the Ritz with a faint hope in her mind. Miss Brigs happened to be seated with her smart back to the man and old woman when they entered the restaurant, and they sat down at a table behind her, but in full view of Lady Sellingworth, who wished to draw her companion’s attention to them, but who also was reluctant to show any interest in them. She knew that Miss Briggs knew a great deal about her, and she did not mind that. But nevertheless, she felt at this moment a certain _pudeur_ which was almost like the _pudeur_ of a girl. Had it come to her with her entrance into the fifties? Or was it a cruel gift from her imp? She was not sure; but she could not persuade herself to draw Miss Briggs’s attention to the people who interested her until the bill was presented and it was almost time to leave the restaurant. Then at last she could keep silence no longer, and she said: “The people one sees in Paris seem to become more and more extraordinary! Many of them one can’t place at all.” Miss Briggs, who had lived in Paris for quite thirty years, remarked: “Do you think they are more extraordinary than the people one sees about London?” “Yes, really I do. That old woman in the black wig over there, for instance, intrigues me. Where can she come from? Who can she be?” Miss Briggs looked carelessly round, and at once understood the reason of Lady Sellingworth’s remarks. “The man” was before her, and she knew it. How? She could not have said. Had she been asked she would probably have replied: “My bones told me.” “Oh,” she said, after the look. “She’s the type of old woman who is born and brought up in Brazil, and who, when she is faded, comes to European spas for her health. I have met many of her type at Aix and Baden Baden.” “Ah!” replied Lady Sellingworth carelessly. “You don’t know her then?”