"A truce, Monsieur Loris; you are amusing, but you like to pose as one of the rejected and disconsolate when you have women to listen. It is all because you are just a little theatrical, is it not? How effective it must be with your Parisiennes!" "My faith!" he exclaimed, turning to the dowager in dismay; "and only three months since she emerged from the convent! What then do they not teach in those sanctuaries!" The girl arose, made him a mocking obeisance, and swinging the turban in her hand passed into the alcoved music room; a little later an Italian air, soft, dreamy, drifted to them from the keys of the piano. "She will make a sensation," prophesied Dumaresque, sagely. "You mean socially? No; if left to herself she would ignore society; it is not necessary to her; only her affection for me brings her from her studies now. Should I die tomorrow she would go back to them next week." "But why, why, why? If she were unattractive one could understand; but being what she is--" "Being what she is, she has a fever to know all the facts of earth and all the guesses at heaven." "And bars out marriage!" "Not for other people," retorted the dowager. "But to what use then all these accomplishments, all this pursuit of knowledge? Does she mean to hide it all in some convent at last?" "I would look for her rather among some savage tribes, doing missionary work." "Yes, making them acquainted with Voltaire," he said, laughingly. "But you are to be envied, god-mother, in having her all to yourself; she adores you!" The dark old face flushed slightly, and the keen eyes softened with pleasure. "It was Alain's choice, and it was a good one," she said, briefly. "What of the English people you asked to bring today?" "They are not English; one is American and one is Irish." "True; but their Anglo-Saxon makes them all English to me. I hear there are so many of them in Paris now; Comtesse Biron brings one today; there is her message, what is the name?" Dumaresque unfolded the pink sheet, glanced at it and smiled. "My faith; it is the mother of the young lieutenant whom I asked to bring, Madame McVeigh. So, she was a school friend of the Comtesse Helene, eh? That seems strange; still, this Madame McVeigh may be a French woman transplanted." "I do not know; but it will be a comfort if she speaks French. The foreigners of only one language are trying." * * * * * Mrs. McVeigh offered no linguistic difficulties to the dowager who was charmed with her friend's friend. "But you are surely not the English-Americans of whom we see so much these days? I cannot think it." "No, Madame. I am of the French-Americans--the creoles--hence the speech you are pleased to approve. My people were the Villanennes of Louisiana."