"I don't _think_ he'd sell them," Bulstrode was certain of it, "they're extremely precious in his eyes." "I'm a good judge of works of art, however," she said after a moment, "that is to say, I know a good thing when I see it. There was a little picture in one of the shops back of me that I would have given a lot to own." Her friend exclaimed: "Are you going to buy it! That is to say, will Falconer buy it for you?" "My dear soul--with his horse running to-morrow! At any rate, the bijou is already bought above my head. I went in yesterday to see what was the least they would take for it, and found the Prince Pollona, the Englishman who buys for the Wallace Collection, and somebody who, they tell me, was the Rockefeller of St. Petersburg. Well, my little picture was what they all wanted, and you can imagine that _I_ retired from the running...! But I tell you this," she said, "only to show you how very good my taste is, and so that you may rely on my selections." Bulstrode smiled in a way that said he thought he might rely on her, but still he asked rather quizzically, "Well, what are you going to recommend to me _now_?" The lady at the moment, not having anything in mind, looked suddenly up, gave him whimsically: "Molly and her Marquis." The two young people with Jack Falconer were coming slowly along the Rue de Paris toward them. The grace of the girl, her freshness under her wide hat where flowers and ribbons danced and blended; the radiant pleasure she exhaled, the swing of her dress, her youth, expressed so happily the joy of life, recommended themselves easily in a flash.... "Oh, _Molly_--she's perfect!" "And the Marquis?" "He is perfectly in _love_," ... Bulstrode allowed him so much. "My dear friend, remember I know my _objets d'art_." "Oh, as an _objet d'art_...!" Bulstrode took the young man in: his white immaculateness, his boutonnière, his panama--(not less than forty dollars a straw, as Jimmy knew) his monocle. "As an _objet d'art_," he further conceded to her, "he's perfect, too!" "As an _homme de race_," said the American lady eagerly, with the true Republican appreciation of blood and title, "as an _homme du monde_, as a..." "Title?" he finished for her. "Oh, the Presle-Vaulx are all right! I'll grant him a perfect title, sound as a bell, first Crusade--_Léonce de Presle-Vaulx main droite, or sur azur--Pour toi seule_. It's a good old tradition--a good old name." She scented his lack of sympathy. "Oh, I'll stand for him, Jimmy. I know the _pâte_, as they say. I know the ring and the tone; and you must, at my valuation, take him." "Molly, dear lady, has done the taking." Bulstrode lifted his hat as the trio came up. "And what, after all, can we--the rest of us do?"