"Perhaps. More surely," she replied with a smile which, on her peerless lips, seemed divine, "_I_ should make the faults of the Dobronowskas be forgotten." They had arrived at the same conclusion as the journey ended, but the means had not occurred yet to either. "Here we are," he exclaimed, as the carriage horse came to a stop. He alighted, entered the hotel and settled for the young lady's stay. Returning, he came to help her out. "My door will never be closed to you," she said, remembering how, in her story, her notorious ancestors had playfully suggested in a letter announcing her renunciation of her scheming mother's toils and her return to marry Clemenceau, that he might leave his door on the jar for her at all instants. "And yet, what will be the gain in our meeting again?" "Everything for our souls, and materially! Here in France, where La Belle Iza and the executed Clemenceau point a moral, neither of us can find a mate in marriage easily. If blood stains me, shame is reflected on you. Let us efface both blood and shame by an united effort! Let our life in common force the world to look no farther than ourselves and see nothing of the disgrace beyond." "I do not care a fig for what people think or say," said the one-night _diva_, with a curl of the lip. "And I do not understand you fully." "Wait till I see you again, when all shall be made clear. Meanwhile, cousin--since without you I should have lost my life, or, certainly my liberty--I am eternally bound to you. It is left to you to have the bonds solemnized in the church, here, in France--my country!" CHAPTER X. THE FOX IN THE FOLD. Among the secluded villas that dot with pretty colors the suburb of Montmorency, there is none more agreeable than the Villa Reine-Claude, which was in the hands of the notary who had managed the transmission of the maintenance money to young Clemenceau. At the hint from M. Ritz, who had a debt of honor to pay the son of his dead friend, the house was rented at a nominal sum. Here Felix, as he boldly described himself by right, though the name had a tinge of mockery, installed himself with his bride. He had a portfolio of architectural sketches soon completed and, thanks to the fellowship to which his name might exercise a spell, all the old artists who had known his father, helped him manfully. Luckily, there was something markedly novel in his work.