"Oh, my dear child," she said dramatically, "how could you be so imprudent?" May became visibly paler, and in her turn sank into a chair. "I don't know what you mean," she faltered. "If you had lived in society abroad as much as I have, May," was the answer, delivered with an expressive shake of the head, "you would know how dreadfully a girl compromises herself by writing to a strange gentleman." May started up, her eyes dilating. "Oh, how did you know?" she demanded. "The Count thinks the most horrible things," the widow went on mercilessly. "You know what foreigners are. It wouldn't have been so bad if it were an American." Poor May put her hands together with a woeful gesture as if she were imploring mercy. "Oh, is it the Count really?" she cried. "I saw that he had a red carnation in his buttonhole yesterday, but I hoped that it was an accident." "A red carnation?" repeated Mrs. Neligage. "Yes; that was the sign by which I was to know him. I said so in that letter." It is to be doubted if the Recording Angel at that moment wrote down to the credit of Mrs. Neligage that she regretted having by chance stuck that flower in the Count's coat at the County Club. "You poor child!" she murmured with a world of sympathy in her voice. The touch was too much for May, who melted into tears. She was a simple-hearted little thing or she would never have written the unlucky letters to Christopher Calumus, and in her simplicity she had evidently fallen instantly into the trap set for her. She dabbed resolutely at her eyes with her handkerchief, but the fountain was too free to be so easily stanched. "It will make a horrid scandal," Mrs. Neligage went on by way of comfort. "Oh, I do hate those dreadful foreign ways of talking about women. It used to make me so furious abroad that I wanted to kill the men." May was well on the way to sobs now. "Such things are so hard to kill, too," pursued the widow. "Everybody here will say there is nothing in it, but it will be repeated, and laughed about, and it will never be forgotten. That's the worst of it. The truth makes no difference, and it is almost impossible to live a thing of that sort down. You've seen Laura Seaton, haven't you? Well, that's just what ruined her life. She wrote some foolish letters, and it was found out. It always is found out; and she's always been in a cloud." Mrs. Neligage did not mention that the letters which the beclouded Miss Seaton had written had been to a married man and with a full knowledge on her part who her correspondent was. "Oh, Mrs. Neligage," sobbed May. "Do you suppose the Count will tell?" "My dear, he showed me the letter." "Oh, did he?" moaned the girl, crimson to the eyes. "Did you read it?" "Read it, May? Of course not!" was the answer, delivered with admirable appearance of indignation; "but I knew the handwriting."