"Oh," cried Montjoie, a little confused. "No; I don't think so--people don't as a rule." "Lord Montjoie, that is right? I like always to know----" "So do I," said Montjoie; "it's always best to ask, ain't it, and then there can be no mistakes? But you don't mean to say _that_? You here yesterday and all the time? I shouldn't think you could have been hid. Not the kind of person, don't you know." "I can't tell about being the kind of person. It has been fun," said Bice; "sometimes I have seen you all coming, and waited till there was just time to fly. I like leaving it till the last moment, and then there is the excitement, don't you know." "By Jove, what fun!" said Montjoie. He was not clever enough, few people are, to perceive that she had mimicked himself in tone and expression. "And I might have caught you any day," he cried. "What a muff I have been." "If I had allowed myself to be caught I should have been a greater--what do you call it? You wear beautiful things to do your smoking in, Lord Montjoie; what is it? Velvet? And why don't you wear them to dinner?--you would look so much more handsome. I am very fond myself of beautiful clothes." "Oh, by Jove!" cried Montjoie again, with something like a blush. "You've seen me in those things! I only wear them when I think nobody sees. They're something from the East," he added, with a tone of careless complacency; for, as a matter of fact, he piqued himself very much upon this smoking-suit which had not, at the Hall, received the applause it deserved. "You go and smoke like that among other men? Yes, I perceive," said Bice, "you are just like women, there is no difference. We put on our pretty things for other ladies, because you cannot understand them; and you do the same." "Oh, come now, Miss---- Forno-Populo! you don't mean to tell me that you got yourself up like that for the sake of the ladies?" cried the young man. "For whom, then?" said Bice, throwing up her head; but afterwards, with the instinct of a young actress, she remembered her _role_, which it was fun to carry out thoroughly. She laughed. "You are the most clever," she said. "I see you are one that women cannot deceive." Montjoie laughed, too, with gratified vanity and superior knowledge. "You are about right there," he said. "I am not to be taken in, don't you know. It's no good trying it on with me. I see through ladies' little pretences. If there were no men you would not care what guys you were; and no more do we." Bice made no reply. She turned upon him that dazzling smile of which she had learned the secret from the Contessa, which was unfathomable to the observer but quite simple to the simple-minded; and then she said: "Do you amuse yourself very much in the evening? I used to hear the voices and think how pleasant it would have been to be there."