“Bravo!” she cried.  “You see?  Corni and I, we win.”

“Look at their faces!” said Mr. Pedlow, tactlessly drawing attention to what was, for the moment, an undeniably painful sight.  “Don’t tell me an Italian knows how to make a good Martini!”

Mellin profoundly agreed, but, as he joined the small procession to the Countess’ dinner-table, he was certain that an Italian at least knew how to make a strong one.

The light in the dining-room was provided by six heavily-shaded candles on the table; the latter decorated with delicate lines of orchids.  The chairs were large and comfortable, covered with tapestry; the glass was old Venetian, and the servants, moving like useful ghosts in the shadow outside the circle of mellow light, were particularly efficient in the matter of keeping the wine-glasses full.  Madame de Vaurigard had put Pedlow on her right, Cooley on her left, with Mellin directly opposite her, next to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke.  Mellin was pleased, because he thought he would have the Countess’s face toward him.  Anything would have pleased him just then.

“This is the kind of table everybody ought to have,” he observed to the party in general, as he finished his first glass of champagne.  “I’m going to have it like this at my place in the States—­if I ever decide to go back.  I’ll have six separate candlesticks like this, not a candelabrum, and that will be the only light in the room.  And I’ll never have anything but orchids on my table—­”

“For my part,” Lady Mount-Rhyswicke interrupted in the loud, tired monotone which seemed to be her only manner of speaking, “I like more light.  I like all the light that’s goin’.”

“If Lady Mount-Rhyswicke sat at my table,” returned Mellin dashingly, “I should wish all the light in the world to shine upon so happy an event.”

“Hear the man!” she drawled.  “He’s proposing to me.  Thinks I’m a widow.”

There was a chorus of laughter, over which rose the bellow of Mr. Pedlow.

“‘He’s game!’ she says—­and ain’t he?”

Across the table Madame de Vaurigard’s eyes met Mellin’s with a mocking intelligence so complete that he caught her message without need of the words she noiselessly formed with her lips:  “I tol’ you you would be making love to her!”

He laughed joyously in answer.  Why shouldn’t he flirt with Lady Mount-Rhyswicke?  He was thoroughly happy; his Helene, his belle Marquise, sat across the table from him sending messages to him with her eyes.  He adored her, but he liked Lady Mount-Rhyswicke—­he liked everybody and everything in the world.  He liked Pedlow particularly, and it no longer troubled him that the fat man should be a friend of Madame de Vaurigard.  Pedlow was a “character” and a wit as well.  Mellin laughed heartily at everything the Honorable Chandler Pedlow said.

“This is life,” remarked the young man to his fair neighbor.