"No," said Aribaud; "she had her baby." He waved a triumphant hand towards the garden. "And from the first promise of that God-sent gift, the glamour of the theatre faded from her mind and me talked only of her home. From that day to this we have been as happy together as you see us now." My exclamation was cut short by the hostess whose history I had been hearing. "Messieurs, are you really sure we aren't laughing too much for you?" she pealed up to us again. "Sure, sure! It is well--it is as it should be--we come to join you," shouted Aribaud. "Laugh loud, my love--laugh on!" III THAT VILLAIN HER FATHER Henri Vauquelin was a widower with one daughter, to whom he had denied nothing from the time she used to whimper for his watch and drop it on the floor. So, after she left the convent where she had been educated, and told him how much she was missing her friend Georgette, he said gaily, "Mais, ma petite, invite mademoiselle--whatever her name may be, to come to Paris and stay with us for a month." His gaiety was a trifle forced, however. Though he was happy to give his daughter a companion, he was pained to learn that his own companionship hadn't been enough. "For I have done all I could," he mused. "The fact is, that though I feel fairly young, I am elderly. That's the trouble. To a girl of twenty-one, a father of forty-five is an ancient for the chimney corner. I must see about finding her a husband--I shall have to talk to madame Daudenarde about her son the first time I am in the neighbourhood." And after Blanche had flung her arms round his neck, and darted forth to send the invitation to her friend, he surveyed his reflection in a glass pensively, and noted that his moustache was much greyer than he had thought. When the indispensable Georgette arrived, in a costume that became her admirably, and sat at dinner, in a dress that became her more admirably still, replying to him with composure and point, he was surprised at the girls' attraction for each other--and his surprise did not diminish as the days passed. Though not actually more than two or three years older than Blanche, mademoiselle Paumelle was in tone much older. Blanche was an ingenue; Georgette was a woman. Excepting in moments, when she romped like a schoolgirl, all spontaneity and high spirits. "She is a queer compound, your chum," he remarked when she had been with them for a fortnight. "Alternately thirty, and thirteen!" "You don't like her, papa?" "Oh, yes, she is well enough, and not bad-looking. I am relieved she did not turn out to be ugly--that would have depressed me. But it is a trifle confusing to be uncertain whether I am about to be addressed by a woman of the world or a madcap from a nursery." "She used always to be a madcap till she lost her mother--you see, there are only her stepfather and his two sisters now. It is that that has changed her so dreadfully."