For her she saw a man of twenty-five or six, tall, manly, and handsome in a splendid intellectual fashion, with fair hair clustered above a grand white brow, blue-gray eyes bright and laughing, a fair mustache ornamenting lips at once firm and sweet, a chin that was grave and full of power in spite of the womanish dimple that cleft it--altogether a most attractive face, and one that influenced her subtly, for some of the sullenness faded from her face, and with brightening eyes she exclaimed, with all the freedom of a child: "Oh, I know you at sight! You are madame's handsome Yankee, _n'est ce pas_?" He rose, laughing, and with his most elaborate bow. "Eliot Van Zandt, at your service," he said. "Yes, I am the Yankee. And you?" He saw the sullen gleam come back into her eyes, as she answered curtly, and, as it seemed, with repressed wrath: "Oh. I am Little Nobody, madame says. I have always been too poor to have even a name. Have some fruit, please." Madame tittered behind her elaborate fan, and the members of the Jockey Club exchanged glances. Eliot took an orange mechanically, and then the girl put the salver down and turned to go. But Mme. Lorraine's dark eyes looked over the top of her fan with sarcastic amusement. "Remain," she said, with cold brevity; and the girl flung herself angrily down into a chair, with her hands crossed and her tiny slippers dangling. With uplifted eyes she studied intently the face of the stranger. "Handsome, is he, madcap?" at length queried Carmontelle, full of amusement. The large eyes turned on his face scornfully. "Handsomer than any of the ugly old Jockey Club!" she replied, with decision. "We shall all be very jealous of this Yankee," said Markham. "Here we have been adoring you ever since you were a baby, ma'amselle, and you throw us over in a bunch for the sake of this charming stranger. You are cruel, unjust." He began to hum, softly, meaningly: "'Do not trust him, gentle lady, Though his words be low and sweet; Heed not him that kneels before thee, Gently pleading at thy feet.'" The song went no further, for the girl looked at him with large eyes of sarcastic amusement and said, curtly: "If I had such an atrocious voice as yours, I should not try to sing." A sally of laughter greeted the words, and the sulky countenance relaxed into a smile. Van Zandt studied the young face closely, his artistic taste charmed by its bright, warm beauty, full of Southern fire and passion. "How came she, the nameless child of a circus-rider, by her dower of high-bred, faultless beauty?" he thought, in wonder, noticing the dainty white hands, the "Delicate Arab arch of her feet, And the grace that, light and bright as the crest Of a peacock, sits on her shining head; And she knows it not. Oh, if she knew it! To know her beauty might half undo it."