“Awfully stupid of you!” Marguerite contemptuously commented. “Especially since he bears your name, and you were his proxy-godfather, _mon ami_!” “That’s true, too!” admitted Pavlo, more meekly. “Proxy-godfather--not godfather by proxy. There’s a difference.” “A very serious _nuance_,” Marguerite reprehended; “you had the honor of proxyfying (Lord! I wonder if that’s the right way to put it?) His Majesty the Autocrat of All the Russias, and came loaded down with offerings like the Magi. Whew! You mind that golden christening-goblet studded with clear-set rubies and diamonds as big as haricot beans? It was a sore temptation not to have them strung into a necklace for myself.” “As if your jewel-coffers were not teeming and running over already,” he scoffed. “Don’t forget your own little _cadeau-de-relevailles_ from the same Imperial source, Madame la Princesse Palitzin. Pearls the size of hazelnuts--large hazelnuts at that--are not picked up in the hoof-prints of a pack-mule.” And he pointed to the strands coiled about her white neck beneath the sheer ananas-batiste of her corsage. “Why, they reveal their orient, smoored as they are by this stuff you wear.” “Smoored,” she shrugged. “Who ever heard of speaking so insolently of autocratic pearls?” Marguerite, though transformed by the plenitude of her happiness, was never more than now deserving of her nickname of “Moonglade.” Standing there on the broad terrace of _La Tour du Chevalier_, she looked every bit as young as she had done when Basil had visited her at the Hôtel de Plenhöel just after his marriage with Laurence Seton. Slender, erect, ethereal as ever, and dainty with the daintiness of a flower, there was nothing full-blown as yet about _this_ Marguerite of Marguerites, and her father, walking up from the plaisance, smiled with pride as he saw her. “Oh!” she cried. “Here is Grandpapa--such a venerable Grandpapa! Pull his mustache, Pavlo, junior--a corn-colored mustache, too, as silky as your hair, baby mine! Isn’t it a scandal to look so indecently youthful, my father dear?” Régis laughed. He certainly did not give a very grandfatherly impression, for he stubbornly refused to become even middle-aged, and was still the _beau-sabreur_ and passionate sportsman he had always been. His daughter’s ideal existence with Basil was an everlasting joy to him, and now he beamed upon the little group on the terrace. Suddenly his smile disappeared. “Look out, _Chevalier_!” he said, precipitately; and to Pavlo’s immense astonishment Marguerite hastily put his small namesake down on the blanket, looking almost fearfully over her shoulder. “Don’t praise the baby before Piotr!” she whispered to him. “I’ll explain later.”