“You know her very well, I suppose?” “As well as one knows a creature one has carried about in one’s arms before it could walk,” he acquiesced. “As long as that? I heard that you were personally related to her, but not very closely.” “She is my niece, _à la mode de Bretagne par alliance_,” he explained. “Oh, that accounts for your enthusiasm, I suppose,” Laurence proposed, with a pale smile. “One is apt to be more or less proud of what belongs to one, whether _par alliance_ or otherwise.” “Not always!” he vigorously rejoined. “Ah! _Sapristi!_ Not always, I assure you! (Can she be stupid into the bargain?” he mused. “That would be a superfetation of calamities!”) And as Countess Chouróff was rising, he pushed back his chair and drew Laurence’s out of the way of her train, while she moved at his side with that subtle rustle of superfine silken linings that conveys even to the dullest masculine mind an especial care for dress and the wisdom of dealing with a great _couturier_. In any other case, Salvières could in all probability have dismissed from his mind the thoroughly disagreeable quarter of an hour he had just passed, but this was impossible for him to do. His keen eyes unrolled before him a long and dark array of eminently unpleasant possibilities, not concerning him or his wife, precisely, and yet liable to make things a bit dreary for both of them. “How do you like her?” The question took him by surprise as he was escaping from the concert-room, to which the Countess’s guests were being marshaled, and, turning quickly, he found his brother-in-law at his elbow. “Like whom?” he demanded, eager to gain time. “Why, my wife, of course!” Basil answered. “I saw you chatting nineteen to the dozen with her, until the end of the Pantagruelian feast Madame Chouróff euphemistically calls a simple little dinner.” “She is remarkably beautiful,” Salvières sincerely approved. “Indeed, I find that the portraits you sent us were far from doing her justice.” Curiously enough, this time Basil did not flush with gratification, as when Régis de Plenhöel had been the appraiser; instead, an almost worried expression overcast his features. “Come here, Jean!” he said, drawing Salvières into the billiard-room, which was entirely unoccupied at the moment, and both men seated themselves upon a broad, mellow divan far away from the central hanging-lamps. “I don’t wish,” Basil said at once, “simply to know how you like Laurence’s looks--that is not necessary. I am anxious--very anxious to hear what else you have to say about her. Between you and me there has always existed a sympathy and a comprehension greater than ordinary _camaraderie_, and that is why I don’t scruple to question you as I do. What do you think of Laurence, and what do you think Tatiana will think of her--which,” he concluded, “makes many ‘thinks’ in one request.” “Plain speaking and clear understanding. An exchange without robbery! Eh?” “Exactly!”