Pickering was too much in love for false shame.  “She tells me that she loves me too much to find courage to condemn me.  She agrees with me that I have a right to be happy.  I ask no exemption from the common law.  What I claim is simply freedom to try to be!”

Of course I was puzzled; it was not in that fashion that I had expected Madame Blumenthal to make use of my information.  But the matter now was quite out of my hands, and all I could do was to bid my companion not work himself into a fever over either fortune.

The next day I had a visit from Niedermeyer, on whom, after our talk at the opera, I had left a card.  We gossiped a while, and at last he said suddenly, “By the way, I have a sequel to the history of Clorinda.  The major is at Homburg!”

“Indeed!” said I.  “Since when?”

“These three days.”

“And what is he doing?”

“He seems,” said Niedermeyer, with a laugh, “to be chiefly occupied in sending flowers to Madame Blumenthal.  That is, I went with him the morning of his arrival to choose a nosegay, and nothing would suit him but a small haystack of white roses.  I hope it was received.”

“I can assure you it was,” I cried.  “I saw the lady fairly nestling her head in it.  But I advise the major not to build upon that.  He has a rival.”

“Do you mean the soft young man of the other night?”

“Pickering is soft, if you will, but his softness seems to have served him.  He has offered her everything, and she has not yet refused it.”  I had handed my visitor a cigar, and he was puffing it in silence.  At last he abruptly asked if I had been introduced to Madame Blumenthal, and, on my affirmative, inquired what I thought of her.  “I will not tell you,” I said, “or you’ll call me soft.”

He knocked away his ashes, eyeing me askance.  “I have noticed your friend about,” he said, “and even if you had not told me, I should have known he was in love.  After he has left his adored, his face wears for the rest of the day the expression with which he has risen from her feet, and more than once I have felt like touching his elbow, as you would that of a man who has inadvertently come into a drawing-room in his overshoes.  You say he has offered our friend everything; but, my dear fellow, he has not everything to offer her.  He evidently is as amiable as the morning, but the lady has no taste for daylight.”

“I assure you Pickering is a very interesting fellow,” I said.

“Ah, there it is!  Has he not some story or other?  Isn’t he an orphan, or a natural child, or consumptive, or contingent heir to great estates?  She will read his little story to the end, and close the book very tenderly and smooth down the cover; and then, when he least expects it, she will toss it into the dusty limbo of her other romances.  She will let him dangle, but she will let him drop!”

“Upon my word,” I cried, with heat, “if she does, she will be a very unprincipled little creature!”