At all events, the girl sitting in the low chair by his side seemed to be under some such influence, seemed to have escaped the unrest which is said to live in palaces.

When she spoke it was with a quiet voice, as one having plenty of time and leisure.

“Where have you been?” she asked practically.  Maggie was always practical.

“To the Lanovitches’, where we met the Baron de Chauxville.”

“Ah!”

“Why—­ah?”

“Because I dislike the Baron de Chauxville,” answered Maggie in her decisive way.

“I am glad of that—­because I hate him!” said Paul.  “Have you any reason for your dislike?”

Miss Delafield had a reason, but it was not one that she could mention to Paul.  So she gracefully skirted the question.

“He has the same effect upon me as snails,” she explained airily.

Then, as if to salve her conscience, she gave the reason, but disguised, so that he did not recognize it.

“I have seen more of M. de Chauxville than you have,” she said gravely.  “He is one of those men of whom women do see more.  When men are present he loses confidence, like a cur when a thoroughbred terrier is about.  He dislikes you.  I should take care to give M. de Chauxville a wide berth if I were you, Paul.”

She had risen, after glancing at the clock.  She turned down the page of her book, and looking up suddenly, met his eyes, for a moment only.

“We are not likely to drop into a close friendship,” said Paul.  “But—­he is coming to Thors, twenty miles from Osterno.”

There was a momentary look of anxiety in the girl’s eyes, which she turned away to hide.

“I am sorry for that,” she said.  “Does Herr Steinmetz know it?”

“Not yet.”

Maggie paused for a moment.  She was tracing with the tip of her finger a pattern stamped on the binding of the book.  It would seem that she had something more to say.  Then suddenly she went away without saying it.

In the meantime Claude de Chauxville had gently led the Countess Lanovitch to invite him to stay to dinner.  He accepted the invitation with becoming reluctance, and returned to the Hotel de Berlin, where he was staying, in order to dress.  He was fully alive to the expediency of striking while the iron is hot—­more especially where women are concerned.  Moreover, his knowledge of the countess led him to fear that she would soon tire of his society.  This lady had a lamentable facility for getting to the bottom of her friends’ powers of entertainment within a few days.  It was De Chauxville’s intention to make secure his invitation to Thors, and then to absent himself from the countess.

At dinner he made himself vastly agreeable, recounting many anecdotes fresh from Paris, which duly amused the Countess Lanovitch, and somewhat shocked Catrina, who was not advanced or inclined to advance.

After dinner the guest asked Mlle. Catrina to play.  He opened the grand piano in the inner drawing-room with such gallantry and effusion that the sanguine countess, post-prandially somnolescent in her luxurious chair, began rehearsing different modes of mentioning her son-in-law, the baron.