"I should indeed feel honored if monsieur would recall the circumstances of our acquaintance," she said, blandly; "for I am frequently accosted by strangers who vow that I am known to them, and who afterward discover that my resemblance to the person they took me for was owing solely to the Protean expression of my face. I can't help my face being like twenty other people's in a breath, can I, Miss Walsingham? But I would like to think that Chevalier Calembours had known me previously, for I always have a warm side to Frenchmen for a special reason." The chevalier was himself again: his doubts had fled, and he was laughing at himself for his momentary illusion. "Madame has explained the sweet hallucination," he said, hand on heart. "We have not met except in dreams. Ah! that we had been friends in those days of glory when I was the favorite of the Hungarian court, the Count of Calembours, owner of diamond mines! _Mon Dieu!_ my homage was worthy of its object then!" Monsieur launched into his loftiest braggadocio, and madame listened well, and drew him out with skill. "So monsieur was born in Hungary?" "In Hungary, madame." "Have you seen the pretty river Theiss?" "Hem! Yes, madame. I lived in Irzegedin." "Ah!"--with a mocking smile--"the residences of the counts are particularly magnificent in that city, are they not?" "Madame is right. Madame must have been there." "Oh, no, my dear chevalier, else I should have heard of Count Calembours, without doubt. And Chevalier de Calembours left his princely fortune behind when he came here to fight?" "Madame is a good listener." "Brave chevalier! but you will return to your estates?" "Without doubt, madame, when I am weary of glory." "Admirable man!" cried madame, with a silvery laugh. "What an enviable lady your wife is." "Dear friend, I have no wife," complacently. "Is that credible? A young and handsome man without a wife? Oh, chevalier!" "My wife,"--with a frown--"my wife is gone long since." "Alas! how sad. You must have been adored by her," breathed Madame Hesslein. "Ah, _pauvrette_, yes. She wearied me with that grand passion of hers." Madame's smiling face hardened into a stone-mask, but her eyes seemed to pulsate with smothered fire. "Wearied monsieur, did she?" (with a threatening smile into his eyes). "Silly, clumsy wretch!" "No, no, madame," laughed the chevalier; "she was a pretty Venus, but unsophisticated, unformed, somewhat vulgar." "And your indifference broke her heart--she died for love of you?" questioned madame, wickedly. "No, no, madame," laughed the chevalier again. "She consoled herself. She ran away with a cotton lord from Manchester, and I heard of her no more." "She was mad--she was a fool!" cried madame, blandly mischievous. "She should have polished her dull luster, and recaptured the errant heart of her noble chevalier. I should have done so."