MULLER:  (coldly)—­Pardon, Mademoiselle, but I happened to overhear what Monsieur Lenoir whispered just now, and those were not his words.  Monsieur Lenoir said, “Look in"... but perhaps Mademoiselle would prefer me not to repeat more?

MARIE—­(in great confusion):—­As—­as you please, M’sieur.

MULLER:—­Then, Mademoiselle, I will be discreet, and I will not even impose a forfeit upon you, as I might do, by the laws of the game.  It is for Monsieur Lenoir to continue.

M. LENOIR:—­I do not remember what Monsieur Mueller whispered to me at the close of the last round.

MULLER (pointedly):—­Pardon, Monsieur, I should have thought that scarcely possible.

M. LENOIR:—­It was perfectly unintelligible, and therefore left no impression on my memory.

MULLER:—­Permit me, then, to have the honor of assisting your memory.  I said to you—­“Monsieur, if I believed that any modest young woman of my acquaintance was in danger of being courted by a man of doubtful character, do you know what I would do?  I would hunt that man down with as little remorse as a ferret hunts down a rat in a drain.”

M. LENOIR:—­The sentiment does you honor, Monsieur; but I do not see the application,

MULLER:—­Vous ne le trouvez pas, Monsieur?

M. LENOIR—­(with a cold stare, and a scarcely perceptible shrug of the shoulders):—­Non, Monsieur.

Here Mdlle.  Rosalie broke in with:—­“What are we to do next, M’sieur Mueller?  Are we to begin another round, or shall we start a fresh game?”

To which Mueller replied that it must be “selon le plaisir de ces dames;” and put the question to the vote.

But too many plain, unvarnished truths had cropped up in the course of the last round of my Aunt’s Flower Garden; and the ladies were out of humor.  Madame de Montparnasse, frigid, Cyclopian, black as Erebus, found that it was time to go home; and took her leave, bristling with gentility.  The tragic Honoria stalked majestically after her.  Madame Desjardins, mortally offended with M. Dorinet on the score of Rosalie’s legs, also prepared to be gone; while M. Philomene, convicted of hair-dye and brouille for ever with “the most disagreeable girl in Paris,” hastened to make his adieux as brief as possible.

“A word in your ear, mon cher Dorinet,” whispered he, catching the little dancing-master by the button-hole.  “Isn’t it the most unpleasant party you were ever at in your life?”

The ex-god Scamander held up his hands and eyes.

“Eh, mon Dieu!” he replied.  “What an evening of disasters!  I have lost my best pupil and my second-best wig!”

In the meanwhile, we went up like the others, and said good-night to our hostess.

She, good soul! in her deafness, knew nothing about the horrors of the evening, and was profuse of her civilities.  “So amiable of these gentlemen to honor her little soiree—­so kind of M’sieur Mueller to have exerted himself to make things go off pleasantly—­so sorry we would not stay half an hour longer,” &c., &c.