“Opal!  Opal!  What do you mean?  How could you see so much of a young man in so short a time?  And at night, too?”

Opal pouted.

“You wanted a detailed description.  I was trying to give it to you.  As I told you at the start, I couldn’t see much.  But anyway, he stared!”

“And I dare say he wasn’t the only one who stared!” put in Lady Alice in dry tones of reprehension.  “I can’t imagine who it could be, can you, mother?”

“Not unless it was that strange young Monsieur Zalenska—­Paul Zalenska, I believe he calls himself—­Paul Verdayne’s guest.  I rather think, from the description, that it must have been he!”

“Zalenska?  What a name!  I wonder if he won’t let me call him ‘Paul!’” said the incorrigible Opal, musingly.  “I shall ask him the first time I see him.  Paul’s a pretty name!  I like that—­but I’ll never, never be able to twist my tongue around the other.  He’d get out of hearing before I could call him and that would never do at all!  But ‘Monsieur,’ you say?  Why ‘Monsieur’?  He certainly doesn’t look at all like a Frenchman!”

“No one knows what he is, Opal; nor who.  That is, no one but the Verdaynes.  He has always made a mystery of himself.”

Opal clapped her small hands childishly.

“Charming!  My ideal knight in the flesh!  But how shall I attract him?”

She knitted her brows and pondered as seriously as though the fate of nations depended upon her decision.

“Shall I send him my card, Alice, and ask him to call?  Or would it be better to make an appointment with him for the Park?  Perhaps a ‘personal’ in the News would answer my purpose—­do you think he reads the News, or would the Times be better?  Come, cousins, what do you think?  I am so young, you know!  Please advise me.”

She clasped her hands in a charming gesture of helpless appeal and the ladies looked at one another in horrified silence.  What unheard of thing would this impossible girl propose next!  They would be thankful when they saw her once more safely embarked for the “land of the free,” and out from under their chaperonage, they hoped, forever.  They realized that she was quite beyond their restraining powers.  Had she no sense of decency at all?

The door opened, callers were announced, and the day was saved.

Opal straightened up, put on what she called her “best dignity” and comported herself in so very well-bred and amiable a manner that her cousins quite forgave all her past delinquencies and smiled approval upon the charming courtesy she extended to their guests.  She could be such a lady when she would!  No one could resist her!  And yet they felt themselves sitting upon the crater of a volcano liable to erupt at any moment.  One never felt quite safe with Opal.

But, much to their surprise and relief, everything went beautifully, and the guests departed, delighted with Lady Alice’s “charming American cousin, so sweet, so dainty, so witty, so brilliant, and altogether lovely—­really quite a dear, you know!”