"_Your Mother!_" and her tones expressed only doubt and dread. "No, no! Why, I--I know the voice; it is Madame McVeigh; she called Kenneth, her son--" He smiled an affirmative. "Yes; you will forgive me for having my name spoken to you after all? But there seems to be no help for it. So you see I am not English despite the hat, and my name is Kenneth McVeigh." His smile changed to quick concern as he noticed the strange look on her face, and the swaying movement towards the chair. He put out his hand, but she threw herself back from him with a shuddering movement of repulsion. And a moment later the palms parted beside Mrs. McVeigh, and she was startled at sight of her son's face. "Kenneth! Why, what is wrong?" "A lady has fainted there in the alcove," he said, in a voice which sounded strange to her; "will you go to her?" "Fainted? Why, Kenneth!--" "Yes; I think it is the Marquise de Caron." CHAPTER VIII. The dowager was delighted to find that the one evening of complete social success had changed her daughter-in-law into a woman of society. It had modified her prejudices. She accepted invitations without her former protests, and was only careful that the people whom she visited should be of the most distinguished. Dumaresque watched her with interest. There seemed much of deliberation back of every move she made. The men of mark were the only ones to whom she gave encouragement, and she found several so responsive that there was no doubt, now, as to whether she was awake to her own power--more, she had a mind to use it. She was spoken of as one of the beauties of the day. The McVeighs had gone to Italy, the mother to visit a relative, the son to view the late battle fields on the other side of the Pyrenees and acquaint himself with military matters wherever he found them. He had called on the Marquise the day following the fete at the Hotel Dulac. She had quite recovered her slight indisposition of the preceding evening, and there had been no hesitation about receiving him. She was alone, and she met him with the fine, cool, gracious manner reserved for the people who were of no importance in her life. Looking at her, listening to her, he could scarcely believe this could be the girl who had provoked him into a declaration of love less than a day ago, and in whose eyes he had surprised a fervor responding to his own. She called him Lieutenant McVeigh, with an utter disregard of the fact that she had ever called him anything else. When in sheer desperation he referred to their first meeting, she listened with a chill little smile. "Yes," she agreed; "Fontainbleau was beautiful in the spring time. Maman was especially fond of it. She, herself, had been telling a friend lately of the very unconventional meeting under the bushes of the Mademoiselle and Monsieur Incognito, and he--the friend--had thought it delightfully amusing, good enough for the thread of a comedy."