As she stood at the regent's right, calmly and composedly looking down the long board as she arranged her drapery before reseating herself, this new favorite of the regent appeared in the full costume of the American native! A long soft tunic of exquisitely dressed white leather fell below her hips, intricately embroidered in the native bead work of America, and stained with great blotches of colors done in the quills of the porcupine--heavy reds, sprightly yellows, and deep blues. Down the seams of this loose-fitting tunic depended little waving fringes. The belt which caught it at the waist was wrought likewise in beads. Beneath the level of the table, as she stood, the inquiring eyes might not so clearly see; yet the white leggings, fringed and beaded, and covered by a sweeping blanket of snowy buckskin, might have been seen to finish at the ankle and blend in texture and ornamentation with tiny shoes, which covered the smallest foot yet seen in Paris--shoes at the side of which there dangled the little bells of metal whose tones had told her coming. Here and there upon the bead work of the native artist, who had made this attire at the expense of so much patient effort, there blazed the changing rays of real gems, diamonds, rubies, emeralds--every stone known as precious. As the full bosom of the scornful beauty rose and fell there were cast about in sprays of light the reflections of these gems. Bracelets of dull, beaten metal hung about her wrists. In her hair were ornaments of some dull blue stone. Barbaric, beautiful, fascinating, savage she surely seemed as she met unruffled the startled gaze of these beautiful women of the court, who never, at even the most fanciful _bal masque_ in all Paris, had seen costume like to this. "Ladies, _la voilà_!" spoke the regent. "_Ma belle sauvage_!" The newcomer swept a careless courtesy as she took her seat. As yet she had spoken no word. The door at the lower end of the hall opened. "His Grace le Duc de Richelieu," announced the attendant, who stood beneath the board. There advanced into the room, with slouchy, ill-bred carriage, a young man whose sole reputation was that of being the greatest rake in Paris, the Duc de Richelieu, half-gamin, half-nobleman, who counted more victims among titled ladies than he had fingers on his hands, whose sole concern of living was to plan some new impassioned avowal, some new and pitiless abandonment. This creature, meeting the salute of the regent, and catching at the same moment a view of the regent's guest, found eyes for nothing else, and stood boldly gazing at the face of her whom Paris knew for the first time and under no more definite title than that of "_Belle Sauvage_." "Pray you, be seated, Monsieur le Duc," said the regent, calmly, and the latter was wise enough to comply. "Your Grace," said Madame de Sabran, "was it not understood that we were to meet to-night none less than the wizard, Monsieur L'as?"