Heaven knows how near I was to giving it to him in the _Place du Palais Royal_." _Lady B._--"How delightful it is to hear you talk like that; it does one good (_looking at her embroidery_). This cap is horrible ... just do look at that blue and green: ... do they not clash?" _La Comtesse._--"Take my advice, and put it aside. Embroider a cigar-case for Lord B. I did a beauty for the Count: his initials and coronet in dark blue on a pearl grey ground...." _Lady B._--"That is a good idea.--(_Drawing nearer the Countess._)--Has the Count ever taken you to a _cabinet particulier_?" _La Comtesse._--"Many times." _Lady B._--"Lord B. says a man cannot take his wife to a _cabinet particulier_." _La Comtesse._--"My dear, you are not forced to exhibit your marriage certificate to the waiter. The Count considers that a lady can go anywhere with her husband, and, for my part, I don't see why all the nice places should be reserved for certain characters, and the honest women have to content themselves with the Bouillons-Duval. Those are my ideas, you know." _Lady B._--"They are mine, too, to a certain extent, but I fear that...." _La Comtesse._--"I fear, _ma belle_, that your husband respects you a little too much. I don't dislike the Count's making me ... blush ... sometimes." _Lady B._--"Oh! Lord B. would never do that.... It is I that have made him blush several times." _La Comtesse._--"Yes? You are charming. Tell me all about it!" _Lady B._--"That would be very hard." _La Comtesse._--"Do send me your husband's photograph. I should so like to have in my album the portrait of an English lord who blushes when his wife shocks him." _Lady B._--"By the bye, you have not told me what a _cabinet particulier_ is like." _La Comtesse._--"Oh! they are nothing very wonderful: little rooms coquettishly furnished ... all the pleasure is in the novelty, the strangeness of the thing; ... it is droll to disguise oneself as ... the mistress of one's own husband." _Lady B._--"Oh! do tell me more about it." _La Comtesse._--"You want me to shock you, then?" _Lady B._--"All women enjoy being shocked ... a little, you know ... not too much." _La Comtesse._--"Well, then, dear--it was nearly ten years ago--I was at a ball with my husband. About one o'clock in the morning, I had just been waltzing with him, we saw there was going to be no supper ... and we were getting as hungry as wolves. "'I say, darling,' said the Count to me, 'I am terribly hungry; don't you think it is time to go home?' "'But, my dear, we shall find nothing to eat at home.' "'No?--never mind, we will find a way out of that difficulty pretty soon; we are _en carnaval_; we will go and sup at the _Maison Dorée_.'