Etta rose quickly.  It was some lightning-like woman’s instinct that made her do so.  Standing, she was taller than M. de Chauxville.

“Do not let us be tragic,” she said coldly.  “You have asked me to marry you; why, I don’t know.  The reason will probably transpire later.  I appreciate the honor, but I beg to decline it.  Et voila tout.  All is said.”

He spread out apologetic hands.

“All is not said,” he corrected, with a dangerous suavity.  “I acknowledge the claim enjoyed by your sex to the last word.  In this matter, however, I am inclined to deny it to the individual.”

Etta Sydney Bamborough smiled.  She leaned against the mantelpiece, with her chin resting on her curved fingers.  The attitude was eminently calculated to show to full advantage a faultless figure.  She evidently had no desire to cheapen that which she would deny.  She shrugged her shoulders and waited.

De Chauxville was vain, but he was clever enough to conceal his vanity.  He was hurt, but he was man enough to hide it.  Under the passivity which was his by nature and practice, he had learned to think very quickly.  But now he was at a disadvantage.  He was unnerved by his love for Etta—­by the sight of Etta before him daringly, audaciously beautiful—­by the thought that she might never be his.

“It is not only that I love you,” he said, “that I have a certain position to offer you.  These I beg you to take at their poor value.  But there are other circumstances known to both of us which are more worthy of your attention—­circumstances which may dispose you to reconsider your determination.”

“Nothing will do that,” she replied; “not any circumstance.”

Etta was speaking to De Chauxville and thinking of Paul Alexis.

“I should like to know since when you have discovered that you never could under any circumstances marry me,” pursued M. de Chauxville.  “Not that it matters, since it is too late.  I am not going to allow you to draw back now.  You have gone too far.  All this winter you have allowed me to pay you conspicuous and marked attentions.  You have conveyed to me and to the world at large the impression that I had merely to speak in order to obtain your hand.”

“I doubt,” said Etta, “whether the world at large is so deeply interested in the matter as you appear to imagine.  I am sorry that I have gone too far, but I reserve to myself the right of retracing my footsteps wherever and whenever I please.  I am sorry I conveyed to you or to any one else the impression that you had only to speak in order to obtain my hand, and I can only conclude that your overweening vanity has led you into a mistake which I will be generous enough to hold my tongue about.”

The diplomatist was for a moment taken aback.

“Mais—­” he exclaimed, with indignant arms outspread; and even in his own language he could find nothing to add to the expressive monosyllable.