“My good right hand, Miss Eustis, I assure you!” he beamed.  “But I am sure you two need no dissertations upon each other’s merits!”

“None whatever,” said Miss Eustis, and looked over Mr. Hunter’s head.

“Oh, Miss Eustis and I are really old acquaintances!” smiled the secretary.  “We know each other very well indeed.”

Mary Virginia made no reply.  Instead, she looked about her, indifferently enough, until her glance encountered the Butterfly Man’s.  What he saw in her’s I do not know.  But he instantly moved toward her, and swept me with him.

“Father De Rance and I,” said he, easily, “haven’t had chance to speak to you all afternoon, Miss Eustis.”  He acknowledged Hunter’s friendly greeting pleasantly enough.

“And I’ve been looking for you both.”  The hauteur faded from the young face.  Our own Mary Virginia appeared, changed in the twinkling of an eye.

Inglesby favored me with condescending effusiveness.  Flint got off with a smirking stare.

“And this,” said Inglesby in the sort of voice some people use in addressing strange children to whom they desire to be patronizingly nice and don’t know how, “this is the Butterfly Man!” Out came the jovial smile in its full deadliness.  The Butterfly Man’s lips drew back from his teeth and his eyes narrowed to gimlet points behind his glasses.  “I have heard of you from Mr. Hunter.  And so you collect butterflies!  Very interesting and active occupation for any one that—­ahem! likes that sort of thing.  Very.”

“He collects obituaries, too,” said Hunter, immensely amused.  “You mustn’t overlook the obituaries, Mr. Inglesby.”

Mr. Inglesby favored the collector of butterflies and obituaries with another speculative, piglike stare.  You could see the thought behind it:  “Trifling sort of fellow!  Idiotic!  Very.”  Aloud he merely mumbled: 

“Singular taste.  Very.  Collecting obituaries, eh?”

“Fascinating things to collect.  Very,” said the Butterfly Man, sweetly.  “Not to be laughed at.  I might add yours to ’em, too, you know, some of these fine days!”

“Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed!” murmured Hunter.  Mr. Inglesby, however, was visibly ruffled and annoyed.  Who was this fellow braying of obituaries as if he, Inglesby, were on the highroad to oblivion already, when he was, in reality, still quite a young man?  And right before Miss Eustis!  He turned purple.

“My obituary?” he spluttered. “Mine?  Mine?”

“Sure, if it’s worth while,” said the Butterfly Man, amiably.  Mary Virginia barely suppressed a smile.

“Madame would like to see you, Miss Eustis,” he told her.

Mary Virginia, bowing distantly to the millionaire and his secretary, walked off with him, I following.

Once free of them, her spirits rose soaringly.