"Grandmother, indeed!" exclaimed the marquise indignantly. "Come, Mimi! Robert, finish with this creature and get what satisfaction you can from him. I believe him to be an impostor; at any rate, he does not expect me to mount a camel or to lead a caravan to the rescue." Tremont put Mimi in her arms; she folded her lorgnon and sailed majestically away, like a highly decorated pinnace with silk sails, and Tremont, in the moonlight, continued to talk with the sincere and convincing Hammet Abou. CHAPTER XX JULIA DECIDES Now the young girl had his letters and her own to read. They were sweet and sad companions and she laid them side by side. She did not weep, because she was not of the weeping type; she had hope. Her spirits remained singularly even. Madame de la Maine had given her a great deal to live on. "Julia, what have you done to Robert?" "Nothing, _ma tante_" "He has quite changed. This excursion to Africa has entirely altered him. He is naturally so gay," said the Marquise d'Esclignac. "Have you refused him, Julia?" "_Ma tante_, he has not asked me to be the Duchess de Tremont." Her aunt's voice was earnest. "Julia, do you wish to spoil your life and your chances of happiness? Do you wish to mourn for a dead soldier who has never been more than an acquaintance? I won't even say a _friend_." What she said sounded logical. "_Ma tante_, I do not think of Monsieur de Sabron as dead, you know." "Well, in the event that he may be, my dear Julia." "Sometimes," said the girl, drawing near to her aunt and taking the older lady's hand quietly and looking in her eyes, "sometimes, _ma tante_, you are cruel." The marquise kissed her and sighed: "Robert's mother will be so unhappy!" "But she has never seen me, _ma tante_." "She trusts my taste, Julia." "There should be more than 'taste' in a matter of husband and wife, _ma tante_." After a moment, in which the Marquise d'Esclignac gazed at the bougainvillea and wondered how any one could admire its crude and vulgar color, Miss Redmond asked: "Did you ever think that the Duc de Tremont was in love?" Turning shortly about to her niece, her aunt stared at her. "In love, my dear!" "With Madame de la Maine." The arrival of Madame de la Maine had been a bitter blow to the Marquise d'Esclignac. The young woman was, however, much loved in Paris and quite in the eye of the world. There was no possible reason why the Marquise d'Esclignac should avoid her. "You have been hearing gossip, Julia." "I have been watching a lovely woman," said the girl simply, "and a man. That's all. You wouldn't want me to marry a man who loves another woman, _ma tante_, when the woman loves him and when I love another man?" She laughed and kissed her aunt's cheek. "Let us think of the soldier," she murmured, "let us think just of _him, ma tante_, will you not?" The Marquise d'Esclignac struck her colors.