Bertram—­one of that great and flourishing class of whom Scandal says “she doesn’t know how they do it, or who pays for it”—­albeit a bad match, even for Miss Tayleure, was, as I have said, in good English and French society, and drove his phaeton.  He was saluted on his way along the Champs Elysees and by the lake, by many, and by some ladies who were still unaccountably lingering in Paris.  A superb little Victoria passed.  Bertram raised his hat.

“An Irish girl,” he said, “of superb beauty.”

At the Madrid we met a few people we knew; and, driving home, Bertram saluted Miss Tayleure, who was crawling round the lake with her twin sister, and was provoked to be recognised by a man of fashion in a hack vehicle in the month of August.

[Illustration:  BOIS DE BOULOGNE.]

“Charming evening they’re having,” said Bertram:  “taking out their watches every two minutes to be quite sure they shall get back within the hour and a half which they have made up their minds to afford.  Beastly position!”

“What! living for appearances?”

“Just so; with women especially.  Their dodges are extraordinary.  Tayleure would cheapen a penny loaf, and run down the price of a box of lucifer matches.  There’s a chance for you!  She would be an economical wife; but then, my dear fellow, she would spend all the savings on herself.  Her virtue is like Gibraltar!”

“And would be safe as unintrenched tableland, I should think.”

“Hang it!” Bertram handsomely interposed, “let us drop poor Tayleure.  She believes that her hour of happiness has to be rung in yet; and she is always craning out of the window to catch the first silver echoes of the bells.  The old gentlewoman is happy.”

“Suppose you tell me something about your Irish beauty,” I suggested.

“Quite a different story, my good Q.M.  Wait till I get clear of this clumsy fellow ahead.  So, so, gently.  Now, Miss Trefoil; the Trefoil is a girl whose success I can understand perfectly.  To begin with—­the girl is educated.  In the second place, she is, beyond all dispute, a beautiful woman.  There is not another pair of violet eyes in all Paris—­I mean in the season—­to be matched with hers.  Milk and roses—­nothing more—­for complexion:  and no paint; which makes her light sisters—­accomplished professors of the art of maquillage—­hate her.  A foot!” Bertram kissed the tip of his glove, by way of description.  “A voice that seems to make the air rich about her.”

“Gently, Bertram.  We must be careful how we approach your queen, I see.”

“Not a bit of it.  I am telling you just what you would hear in any of the clubs.  She has a liberal nature, my boy, and loves nobody, that I can find, in particular.  What bewitches me in talking to her is a sort of serious background.  I hate a woman all surface as I hate a flat house.  The Trefoil—­queer name, isn’t it?—­can put a tremor in her voice suddenly.  The Trefoil