Mr. Moffatt smiled good-naturedly at the little boy and then turned back to the contemplation of the hangings.

“I guess you know where those come from, don’t you?” he asked in a tone of satisfaction.

“Oh, yes,” Paul answered eagerly, with a hope he dared not utter that, since the tapestries were there, his French father might be coming too.

“You’re a smart boy to remember them.  I don’t suppose you ever thought you’d see them here?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul, embarrassed.

“Well, I guess you wouldn’t have if their owner hadn’t been in a pretty tight place.  It was like drawing teeth for him to let them go.”

Paul flushed up, and again the iron grasp was on his heart.  He hadn’t, hitherto, actually disliked Mr. Moffatt, who was always in a good humour, and seemed less busy and absent-minded than his mother; but at that instant he felt a rage of hate for him.  He turned away and burst into tears.

“Why, hullo, old chap—­why, what’s up?” Mr. Moffatt was on his knees beside the boy, and the arms embracing him were firm and friendly.  But Paul, for the life of him, couldn’t answer:  he could only sob and sob as the great surges of loneliness broke over him.

“Is it because your mother hadn’t time for you?  Well, she’s like that, you know; and you and I have got to lump it,” Mr. Moffatt continued, getting to his feet.  He stood looking down at the boy with a queer smile.  “If we two chaps stick together it won’t be so bad—­we can keep each other warm, don’t you see?  I like you first rate, you know; when you’re big enough I mean to put you in my business.  And it looks as if one of these days you’d be the richest boy in America....”

The lamps were lit, the vases full of flowers, the foot-men assembled on the landing and in the vestibule below, when Undine descended to the drawing-room.  As she passed the ballroom door she glanced in approvingly at the tapestries.  They really looked better than she had been willing to admit:  they made her ballroom the handsomest in Paris.  But something had put her out on the way up from Deauville, and the simplest way of easing her nerves had been to affect indifference to the tapestries.  Now she had quite recovered her good humour, and as she glanced down the list of guests she was awaiting she said to herself, with a sigh of satisfaction, that she was glad she had put on her rubies.

For the first time since her marriage to Moffatt she was about to receive in her house the people she most wished to see there.  The beginnings had been a little difficult; their first attempt in New York was so unpromising that she feared they might not be able to live down the sensational details of their reunion, and had insisted on her husband’s taking her back to Paris.  But her apprehensions were unfounded.  It was only necessary to give people the time to pretend they had forgotten; and already they were all pretending beautifully.  The French