“You commence soon the yachting, my oncle?” said she, and turning to Audrey:  “Mistair Gilman is no oncle to me.  But he is a great friend of my husband.  I call always him oncle.  Do not I, oncle?  Mistair Gilman lives only for the yachting.  Every year in May we lose him, till September.”

“Really!” said Audrey.

Her heart was apprehensively beating.  She even suspected for an instant that both of them knew who she was, and that Mr. Gilman, before she had addressed him in the drawing-room, had already related to Madame Piriac the episode of Mozewater.  Then she said to herself that the idea was absurd; and lastly, repeating within her breast that she didn’t care, she became desperately bold.

“I should love to buy a yacht,” she said, after a pause.  “We used to live far inland and I know nothing of the sea; in fact I scarcely saw it till I crossed the Channel, but I have always dreamed about it.”

“You must come and have a look at my new yacht, Mrs. Moncreiff,” said Mr. Gilman in his solemn, thick voice.  “I always say that no yacht is herself without ladies on board, a yacht being feminine, you see.”  He gave a little laugh.

“Ah!  My oncle!” Madame Piriac broke in.  “I see in that no reason.  If a yacht was masculine then I could see the reason in it.”

“Perhaps not one of my happiest efforts,” said Mr. Gilman with resignation.  “I am a dull man.”

“No, no!” Madame Piriac protested.  “You are a dear.  But why have you said nothing to-night at the Foas in the great discussion about feminism?  Not one word have you said!”

“I really don’t understand it,” said Mr. Gilman.  “Either everybody is mad, or I am mad.  I dare say I am mad.”

“Well,” said Madame Piriac.  “I said not much myself, but I enjoyed it.  It was better than the music, music, which they talk always there.  People talk too much shops in these days.  It is out-to-place and done over.”

“Do you mean overdone?” asked Mr. Gilman mildly.

“Well, overdone, if you like better that.”

“Do you mean shop, Hortense?” asked Mr. Gilman further.

“Shop, shop!  The English is impossible!”

The automobile crossed the Seine and arrived in the deserted Quai Voltaire.

CHAPTER XIX

THE BOUDOIR

In the setting of her own boudoir Madame Piriac equalled, and in some ways surpassed, the finest pictures which Audrey had imagined of her.  Her evening dress made Audrey doubt whether after all her own was the genuine triumph which she had supposed; in Madame Piriac’s boudoir, and close by Madame Piriac, it had disconcertingly the air of being an ingenious but unconvincing imitation of the real thing.

But Madame Piriac’s dress had the advantage of being worn with the highest skill and assurance; Madame Piriac knew what the least fold of her dress was doing, in the way of effect, on the floor behind her back.  And Madame Piriac was mistress, not only of her dress, but of herself and all her faculties.  A handsome woman, rather more than slim, but not plump, she had an expression of confidence, of knowing exactly what she was about, of foreseeing all her effects, which Audrey envied more than she had ever envied anything.