“Then shall you write or shall I?” said Theodora, as evenly as she could.  “Her servant is waiting.”

VIII

Theodora hummed to herself a glad little chansonnette as she changed her breakfast negligee for the freshest and loveliest of her spring frocks.  She did not know why she was so happy.  There had been no word of any one else being of the party, only she and Mrs. McBride, but Versailles would be exquisite on such a day, and something whispered to her that she might not yawn.

The most radiant vision awaited the widow, when, with unusual punctuality, her automobile stopped at the hotel door.  She came in.  She was voluble, she flattered Josiah.  So good of him to take Mr. Tubbs—­and she hoped it would not tire him.  Theodora should be well looked after.  They might be late and even dine at Versailles, she said, and Mr. Brown was not to be anxious—­she would be responsible for the safe return of his beautiful little wife. (Theodora was five foot seven at least, but her small head and extreme slenderness gave people the feeling she was little—­something to be protected and guarded always.)

Josiah was affable.  Mrs. McBride’s words were so smooth and so many, he had no time to feel Theodora was going to dine out without him, or that anything had been arranged for ultimate ends.

The automobile had almost reached Suresnes before the widow said to her guest: 

“Your father and Lord Bracondale have promised to meet us at the Reservoirs.  Captain Fitzgerald told me how you wanted to go to Versailles, and how your husband is not strong enough to take these excursions, so I thought we might have this little day out there, while he is engaged with Mr. Clutterbuck Tubbs.”

“How sweet of you!” said Theodora.

As they rushed through the smiling country, both women’s spirits rose, and Mrs. McBride’s were the spirits of experience and did not mount without due cause.  Since she had been a girl in Dakota and passionately in love with her first husband—­the defunct McBride was a second venture—­she had not met a man who could quicken her pulse like Captain Fitzgerald.  It was a curious coincidence that they both had already two partners to regret.  It was an extra link between them, and Jane McBride, who was superstitious, read the omen to mean that this time each had met his true mate.

“If he is irresistible to-day, I think I shall clinch matters,” she was saying to herself.

While Theodora’s musings ran: 

“How beautiful Versailles will look, and I dare say he will know all about its history, and be able to tell me interesting things; and oh!  I am so glad I put on this frock, and oh!  I am so happy.”

And aloud they spoke of paradise plumes and the new gray, and the merits and demerits of Callot and Doucet and Jeanne Valez.  And the widow said some bright American things about husbands and the world in general that conveyed crisp truths.