“Oh, frightfully, madame,” he made answer, coming forward with his usual exquisite politeness.

Then, as they did not detain him, he moved off and continued whispering in the journalist’s ear: 

“I’m going to press some more of them.  These young fellows must know some little ladies.”

With that he was observed to accost men and to engage them in conversation in his usual amiable and smiling way in every corner of the drawing room.  He mixed with the various groups, said something confidently to everyone and walked away again with a sly wink and a secret signal or two.  It looked as though he were giving out a watchword in that easy way of his.  The news went round; the place of meeting was announced, while the ladies’ sentimental dissertations on music served to conceal the small, feverish rumor of these recruiting operations.

“No, do not speak of your Germans,” Mme Chantereau was saying.  “Song is gaiety; song is light.  Have you heard Patti in the Barber of Seville?”

“She was delicious!” murmured Leonide, who strummed none but operatic airs on her piano.

Meanwhile the Countess Sabine had rung.  When on Tuesdays the number of visitors was small, tea was handed round the drawing room itself.  While directing a footman to clear a round table the countess followed the Count de Vandeuvres with her eyes.  She still smiled that vague smile which slightly disclosed her white teeth, and as the count passed she questioned him.

“What are you plotting, Monsieur de Vandeuvres?”

“What am I plotting, madame?” he answered quietly.  “Nothing at all.”

“Really!  I saw you so busy.  Pray, wait, you shall make yourself useful!”

She placed an album in his hands and asked him to put it on the piano.  But he found means to inform Fauchery in a low whisper that they would have Tatan Nene, the most finely developed girl that winter, and Maria Blond, the same who had just made her first appearance at the Folies-Dramatiques.  Meanwhile La Faloise stopped him at every step in hopes of receiving an invitation.  He ended by offering himself, and Vandeuvres engaged him in the plot at once; only he made him promise to bring Clarisse with him, and when La Faloise pretended to scruple about certain points he quieted him by the remark: 

“Since I invite you that’s enough!”

Nevertheless, La Faloise would have much liked to know the name of the hostess.  But the countess had recalled Vandeuvres and was questioning him as to the manner in which the English made tea.  He often betook himself to England, where his horses ran.  Then as though he had been inwardly following up quite a laborious train of thought during his remarks, he broke in with the question: 

“And the marquis, by the by?  Are we not to see him?”

“Oh, certainly you will!  My father made me a formal promise that he would come,” replied the countess.  “But I’m beginning to be anxious.  His duties will have kept him.”