[Illustration: Comtesse de la Main and Julia Redmond] Julia Redmond shook her head. She did not want compliments. The eyes of the two women met and read each other. "Couldn't you be frank with me, Madame? It is so easy to be frank." It was, indeed, impossible for Julia Redmond to be anything else. The comtesse, who was only a trifle older than the young girl, felt like her mother just then. She laughed. "But be frank--about what?" "You see," said Julia Redmond swiftly, "I care absolutely nothing for the Duc de Tremont, nothing." "You don't _love_ him?" returned Madame de la Maine, with deep accentuation. "Is it possible?" The girl smiled. "Yes, quite possible. I think he is a perfect dear. He is a splendid friend and I am devoted to him, but I don't love him at all, not at all." "Ah!" breathed Madame de la Maine, and she looked at the American girl guardedly. For a moment it was like a passage of arms between a frank young Indian chief and a Jesuit. Julia, as it were, shook her feathers and her beads. "And I don't care in the _least_ about being a duchess! My father made his money in oil. I am not an aristocrat like my aunt," she said. "Then," said the Comtesse de la Maine, forgetting that she was a Jesuit, "you will marry Robert de Tremont simply to please your aunt?" "But nothing on earth would induce me to marry him!" cried Julia Redmond. "That's what I'm telling you, Madame. I don't love him!" The Comtesse de la Maine looked at her companion and bit her lip. She blushed more warmly than is permitted in the Faubourg St.-Germain, but she was young and the western influence is pernicious. "I saw at once that you loved him," said Julia Redmond frankly. "That's why I speak as I do." The Comtesse de la Maine drew back and exclaimed. "Oh," said Julia Redmond, "don't deny it. I shan't like you half so well if you do. There is no shame in being in love, is there?--especially when the man you love, loves you." The Comtesse de la Maine broke down, or, rather, she rose high. She rose above all the smallness of convention and the rules of her French formal education. "You are wonderful," she said, laughing softly, her eyes full of tears. "Will you tell me what makes you think that he is fond of me?" "But you know it so well," said Julia. "Hasn't he cared for you for a long time?" Madame de la Maine wondered just how much Julia Redmond had heard, and as there was no way of finding out, she said graciously: "He has seemed to love me very dearly for many years; but I am poor; I have a child. He is ambitious and he is the Duc de Tremont." "Nonsense," said Julia. "He loves you. That's all that counts. You will be awfully happy. You will marry the Duc de Tremont, won't you? There's a dear." "Happy," murmured the other woman, "happy, my dear friend, I never dreamed of such a thing!" "Dream of it now," said Julia Redmond swiftly, "for it will come true." CHAPTER XIX THE MAN IN RAGS