“Very unseasonable weather for the time of year,” he managed to stammer, at last.

“Is it?  I hadn’t noticed.”

His manner took on a shade of dignity still more severe, as he wondered whether this reply was a snub or a mere ineptitude.

“You don’t worry about such trifles as the weather,” he struggled on.

“Not often.”

“May I ask how you escape the necessity?”

“By having more pressing things to think about.”  With the finality of this reply the brief conversation dropped, though the perception on Derek’s part that it was not from her inability to carry it on stirred him to an unusual feeling of pique.  Most of the women he met were ready to entertain him without putting him to any exertion whatever.  They even went so far as to manifest a disposition to be agreeable, before which he often found it necessary to retire.  Without being fatuous on the point, he could not be unaware of the general conviction that a wealthy widower, who could still call himself young, must be in want of a wife; and as long as he was unconscious of the need himself, he judged it wise to be as little as possible in feminine society.  On the rare occasions when he ventured therein he was not able to complain of a lack of welcome; nor could he remember an instance in which his hesitating, somewhat scornful, advances had not been cordially met, until to-day.  The immediate effect was to cause him to look at Diane with a closer, if somewhat haughty, attention, their eyes meeting as he did so.  Her voice, with its blending of French and Irish elements, had already made its appeal to his memory, so that the minute was one in which the presentiment of recognition came before the recognition itself.  In his surprise he half arose from his chair, resuming his seat as he exclaimed: 

“It’s Mademoiselle de la Ferronaise!”

His astonished tone and awe-struck manner called to Diane’s lips a little smile.

“It used to be,” she said, trying to speak naturally; “it’s Mrs. Eveleth now.”

“Yes,” he responded, with the absent air of a man getting his wits together; “I remember; that was the name.”

“You knew, then, that I’d been married?”

“Yes; but I didn’t know—­”

His glance at her dress finished the sentence, and she hastened to reply.

“No; of course not.  My husband died at the beginning of last summer—­six months ago.  I hoped some one would have told you before we met.  But we have not many common acquaintances, have we?”

“I hope we may have more now—­if you’re making a visit to New York.”

“I’m making more than a visit; I expect to stay.”

“Oh!  Do you think you’ll like that?”

“It isn’t a question of liking; it’s a question of living.  I may as well tell you at once that since my husband’s death I have my own bread to earn.”

To no Frenchwoman of her rank in life could this statement have been an easy one, but by making it with a certain quiet outspokenness she hoped to cover up her foolish sense of shame.  The moment was not made less difficult for her by the astonishment, mingled with embarrassment, with which he took her remark.