“My friends!  My dear, I cannot tell you just so, on the spur of the moment, but with a little reflection and calculation I could tell you, to a picayune, the rent of every friend in the market.  You can lease, rent, or hire them, like horses, carriages, opera-boxes, servants, by year, month, day, or hour; and the tariff is just as fixed.

“Christians!  Christians are the most discreet people in the world.  If you should ask me what Christianity has most promoted in the world, I should answer without hesitation, discretion.  Of course, when I say the world I mean society, and when I say Christianity I mean our interpretation of it.  If only duns could be pastors, and pastors duns!  But of course you do not know what duns are; they are the guardian angels of the creditor, the pursuing fiends of the debtor.”

After that, the old lady made her disappearance under the waves of that sea into the depths of which it is very improbable that a single friend ever attempted to pursue her.  And there she remained until the news came that she was restored to fortune.

A week passed, two weeks; no sight or sound of her.  It was during this period that her old friends were so occupied resuscitating their old friendships for her—­when all her antique sayings and doings became current ball-room and dinner-table gossip—­that she arose from her obscurity like Cinderella from her ashes, to be decked with every gift that fairy minds could suggest.  Those who had known her intimately made no effort to conceal their importance.  Those who did not know her personally put forward claims of inherited friendship, and those who did not know her traditionally or otherwise—­the nouveaux riches and parvenus, who alone feel the moneyed value of such social connections—­began making their resolutions to capture her as soon as she came in sight of society.

The old residence was to be re-bought, and refurnished from France; the avant scene at the opera had been engaged; the old cook was to be hired back from the club at a fabulous price; the old balls and the old dinners were to gladden the city—­so said they who seemed to know.  Nothing was to be spared, nothing stinted—­at her age, with no child or relative, and life running short for pleasure.  Diamonds, laces, velvets, champagne, Chateau Yquem—­“Grand Dieu Seigneur!” the old Creole servants exclaimed, raising their hands at the enumeration of it.

Where the news came from nobody knew, but everything was certified and accepted as facts, although, as between women, the grain of salt should have been used.  Impatience waxed, until nearly every day some one would ring the bell of the old residence, to ask when the mistress was going to move in.  And such affectionate messages!  And people would not, simply could not, be satisfied with the incomprehensible answers.  And then it leaked out.  The old lady was simply waiting for everything to arrive—­furniture, toilets, carriage, etc.—­to make a grand entree into her old sphere; to come riding on a throne, as it were.  And still the time passed, and she did not come.  Finally two of the clever-heads penetrated the enigma:  mauvaise honte, shyness—­so long out of the world, so old; perhaps not sure of her welcome.  So they determined to seek her out.