“Is that an impertinence or a gaucherie?” she asked. A second later her charming girlish smile lit up her face again, and rising from her seat she dropped a little mock rustic courtesy. “If M. le Capitaine Fyffe will honor me at my own humble residence, I am never abroad till one.” With that she shot me a curiously veiled glance and turned away, holding up her hand as if to ask me to listen to the last strains of the music which her own vehement chatter had already spoiled for everybody who cared to listen to it. She had evidently a purpose in holding me off, and I of course could form a reasonable guess as to what the nature of that purpose was. I devoted myself to Violet for the rest of the evening, and contrived so well to forget the baroness that by the time at which I was compelled to take my leave I was restored to the state of mind natural to an ardent lover who had only that day been lifted from something very like despair to the fulfilment of his hope. When the baroness took leave I helped her to adjust her costly fur mantle. Violet was standing by, and the baroness was talking to her with a pretence of animation which I know was intended to prevent me from giving her a reminder of what had already passed between us. As she turned to go she gave me a moment's chance. I had been waiting for it, and I seized it instantly. “To-morrow, then, at twelve,” I said. She turned, with her eyes wide open and angered, as if I had presumed in speaking to her and had offered her an insult. But she changed her mind in the merest fraction of time, and answered, smilingly: “To-morrow, then, at twelve.” Then she looked at me with the odd veiled glance I had seen before--a glance which expressed both dislike and fear, and held at the same time a keener and more piercing observation than anybody at first sight would have been likely to charge the butterfly-like woman with. I have spoken quite openly, and as if what I have had to say had been the most commonplace matter in the world. Violet had heard me, but when we went back to the drawing-room together she asked no questions. She has told me since that she wondered a little what appointment I could have with the Baroness Bonnar, but she gave me here the first of a hundred thousand proofs of that noble freedom from the pinch of small curiosity which helps to make her different from and superior to her sex.