smote him, for they all say at home I am the picture of Aunt Ginevra. Mamma often declares the likeness is quite ridiculous.”

“Were you the only visitor?”

“The only visitor? Yes. Then there was missy, my cousin—little spoiled, pampered thing.”

“M. de Bassompierre has a daughter?”

“Yes, yes; don’t tease one with questions. Oh dear! I am so tired.”

She yawned. Throwing herself without ceremony on my bed, she added, “It seems mademoiselle was nearly crushed to a jelly in a hubbub at the theatre some weeks ago.”

“Ah! indeed. And they live at a large hôtel in the Rue Crécy?”

“Justement. How do you know?”

“I have been there.”

“Oh, you have? Really! You go everywhere in these days. I suppose Mother Bretton took you. She and Esculapius have the entrée of the De Bassompierre apartments. It seems ‘my son John’ attended missy on the occasion of her accident. Accident? Bah! All affectation! I don’t think she was squeezed more than she richly deserves for her airs. And now there is quite an intimacy struck up. I heard something about ‘auld lang syne’ and what not. Oh, how stupid they all were!”

“All! You said you were the only visitor.”

“Did I? You see one forgets to particularize an old woman and her boy.”

“Dr. and Mrs. Bretton were at M. de Bassompierre’s this evening?”

“Ay, ay, as large as life; and missy played the hostess. What a conceited doll it is!”

Soured and listless, Miss Fanshawe was beginning to disclose the causes of her prostrate condition. There had been a retrenchment of incense, a diversion or a total withholding of homage and attention; coquetry had failed of effect, vanity had undergone mortification. She lay fuming in the vapours.

“Is Miss de Bassompierre quite well now?” I asked.

“As well as you or I, no doubt; but she is an affected little thing, and gave herself invalid airs to attract medical notice. And to see the old dowager making her recline on a couch, and ‘my son John’ prohibiting excitement, etcetera—faugh! the scene was quite sickening.”

“It would not have been so if the object of attention had been changed—if you had taken Miss de Bassompierre’s place.”

“Indeed! I hate ‘my son John.’ ”

“ ‘My son John!’ Whom do you indicate by that name? Dr. Bretton’s mother never calls him so.”

“Then she ought. A clownish, bearish John he is.”

“You violate the truth in saying so; and as the whole of my patience is now spun off the distaff, I peremptorily desire you to rise from that bed and vacate this room.”