Captain Fitzgerald was in his element.  No guest shone so brilliantly as he.  His wit was delicate, his sallies were daring, his looks were insinuating, and his appearance was perfection.

Theodora had every reason to tingle with pride in him, and the widow felt her heart beat.

“Isn’t he just too bright—­your father, Mrs. Brown?” she said as they left the restaurant to have their coffee in the hall.  “You must let me see quantities of you while we are all in Paris together.  It is a lovely city; don’t you agree with me?”

And Theodora did.

Lord Bracondale was of the same breed as Captain Fitzgerald—­that is, they neither of them permitted themselves to be superseded by any other man with the object of their wishes.  When they wanted to talk to a woman they did, if twenty French counts or Russian princes stood in the way!  Thus it was that for the rest of the evening Theodora found herself seated upon a sofa in close proximity to the man who had interested her at dinner, and Mrs. McBride and Captain Fitzgerald occupied two arm-chairs equally well placed, while the rest of the party made general conversation.

Hector Bracondale, among other attractions, had a charming voice; it was deep and arresting, and he had a way of looking straight into the eyes of the person he was talking to.

Theodora knew at once he belonged to the tribe whom Sarah had told her could never be husbands.

She wondered vaguely why, all the time she was talking to him.  Why had husbands always to be bores and unattractive, and sometimes even simply revolting, like hers?  Was it because these beautiful creatures could not be bound to any one woman?  It seemed to her unsophisticated mind that it could be very nice to be married to one of them; but there was no use fighting against fate, and she personally was wedded to Josiah Brown.

Lord Bracondale’s conversation pleased her.  He seemed to understand exactly what she wanted to talk about; he saw all the things she saw and—­he had read Jean d’Agreve!—­they got to that at the end of the first half-hour, and then she froze up a little; some instinct told her it was dangerous ground, so she spoke suddenly of the weather, in a banal voice.

Meanwhile, from the beginning of dinner, Lord Bracondale had been saying to himself she was the loveliest white flower he had yet struck in a path of varied experiences.  Her eyes so innocent and true, with the tender expression of a fawn; the perfect turn of her head and slender pillar of a throat; her grace and gentleness, all appealed to him in a maddening way.

“She is asleep to the whole of life’s possibilities,” he thought.  “What can her husband be about, and what an intoxicatingly agreeable task to wake her up!”

He had lived among the world where the awaking of young wives, or old wives, or any woman who could please man, was the natural course of the day.  It never even struck him then it might be a cruel thing to do.  A woman once married was always fair game; if the husband could not retain her affections that was his lookout.