"Don't apologise; Mimi is all the go; it is who shall have her; and I suppose you ought to consider yourself lucky to be able to serve her up to your guests. You used to live in an artistic circle, that you could charm with a Beethoven quartette. Now you move in a set where classical music would clear your drawing-room as rapidly as a raid of police would a gambling den." Mimi Latouche had just finished her second song. There was a fresh sound of applause, and cries of "Bravo" were heard as she left the small drawing-room accompanied by de Lussac, and followed by half a dozen young men. She passed in front of Dora, and brought up near the door by de Lussac. "_Hein!_ Georges, don't you think I knock 'em with my songs?" "They are enchanted with you, you electrify them. Your songs are awfully jolly, as they say here--light, crisp, and so daring; but these people have not understood, and if they had, it would not matter; they will applaud, when it is done in a foreign language, a thing that they would not tolerate a moment in their own." "Your English people, my boy, are hypocrites. When I am in the bill at _Les ambassadeurs_, the place is always full of English--my songs are _canaille_, aren't they? really _canaille_. The English like that kind of thing. They give me ovations at the Pavilion every night, and I get bouquets by the bushel. Why, old chappie, since I took up the _canaille_ line I have been making my four hundred pounds a week. I have an offer of ten thousand pounds, to appear in New York for six weeks. Would you believe it? I say, Georges, look what I found in my box at the Pav. to-night"; and she showed de Lussac a lovely bouquet of white orchids. "Superb!" exclaimed the young man. "Yes, old boy, but look what there is inside it." So saying, she drew out a handsome bracelet of rubies and diamonds. "Exquisite!" said de Lussac; "is it the price of laxity hidden in the emblem of chastity? It is a diplomatist who sent you that. Flowers have often served as Cupid's letter-box." "Hush! it is from Sabaroff. The bracelet is worth four hundred pounds, at least." "Sabaroff? Why, he is here." "I know that very well," said Mimi; "look at him over there talking to the lady in pearl grey." "I see him; he is gazing her out of countenance," said de Lussac. "Out of countenance? Out of corset, you mean. Sabaroff has a way of staring at a woman; it makes her quite nervous to be near him if she has on evening dress." "My dear Mimi, I did not know you were so easily shocked." "Oh! when I say a woman I don't mean myself--that sort of thing doesn't affect me, you may imagine. I am quite at his disposition--and yours too, yours especially--you are perfectly mashing to-night. After all these Englishmen, dear boy, it is a treat to look at a Frenchman; to be looked at by one--dessert after dinner." Dora had heard it all. Her indignation was at boiling point. "I am going to turn that creature out," she said to Lorimer.