De Chauxville laughed again in an unemotional way. "You alter little," he said. "Your plainness of speech takes me back to Petersburg. Yes, I admit that Mrs. Sydney Bamborough rather interested me. But I assume too much; that is no reason why she should interest you." "She does not, my good friend, but you do. I am all attention." "Do you know anything of her?" asked De Chauxville perfunctorily, not as a man who expects an answer or intends to believe that which he may be about to hear. "Nothing." "You are likely to know more?" Karl Steinmetz shrugged his heavy shoulders, and shook his head doubtfully. "I am not a lady's man," he added gruffly; "the good God has not shaped me that way. I am too d--d fat. Has Mrs. Sydney Bamborough fallen in love with me? Has some imprudent person shown her my photograph? I hope not. Heaven forbid!" He puffed steadily at his pipe, and glanced quickly at De Chauxville through the smoke. "No," answered the Frenchman quite gravely. Frenchmen, by the way, do not admit that one may be too middle-aged, or too stout, for love. "But she is au mieux with the prince." "Which prince?" "Pavlo." The Frenchman snapped out the word, watching the other's benevolent countenance. Steinmetz continued to smoke placidly and contentedly. "My master," he said at length. "I suppose that some day he will marry." De Chauxville shrugged his shoulders. He touched the button of the electric bell, and when the servant appeared, ordered coffee. He selected a cigarette from a silver case with considerable care, and having lighted it smoked for some moments in silence. The servant brought the coffee, which he drank thoughtfully. Steinmetz was leaning back in his deep chair, with his legs crossed. He was gazing into the fire, which burnt brightly, although it was nearly May. The habits of the Talleyrand Club are almost continental. The rooms are always too warm. The silence was that of two men knowing each other well. "And why not Mrs. Sydney Bamborough?" asked Steinmetz suddenly. "Why not, indeed?" replied De Chauxville. "It is no affair of mine. A wise man reduces his affairs to a minimum, and his interest in the affairs of his neighbor to less. But I thought it would interest you." "Thanks." The tone of the big man in the arm-chair was not dry. Karl Steinmetz knew better than to indulge in that pastime. Dryness is apt to parch the fount of expansiveness. De Chauxville's attention was apparently caught by an illustration in a weekly paper lying open on the table near to him. Your shifty man likes something to look at. He did not speak for some moments. Then he threw the paper aside. "Who was Sydney Bamborough, at any rate?" he asked, with a careless assumption of a slanginess which is affected by society in its decadent periods. "So far as I remember," answered Steinmetz, "he was something in the Diplomatic Service." "Yes, but what?" "My dear friend, you had better ask his widow when next you sit beside her at dinner."