“Yes, I know,” said Cartoner, pausing before crossing to the corner of St. James’s Street, in the manner of a man whose life had not been passed in London streets.  For it must be remembered that English traffic is different to the traffic of any other streets in the world.

“There is a girl,” pursued the Frenchman.  “Families like the Bukatys should kill their girls in infancy.  Not that Wanda knows it; she is as gay as a bird, and quite devoted to her father, who is an old ruffian—­and my very dear friend.”

“And what do you want Lady Orlay to do for Princess Wanda?” inquired Cartoner, with a smile.  It was always a marvel to him that Paul Deulin should have travelled so far down the road of life without losing his enthusiasm somewhere by the way.

“That I leave to Lady Orlay,” replied Deulin, with an airy wave of his neat umbrella, which imperilled the eyesight of a passing baker-boy, who abused him.  Whereupon Deulin turned and took off his hat and apologized.

“Yes,” he said, ignoring the incident, “I would not presume to dictate.  All I should do would be to present Wanda to her.  ’Here is a girl who has the misfortune to be a Bukaty; who has no mother; who has a father who is a plotter and an old ruffian—­a Polish noble, in fact—­and a brother who is an enthusiast, and as brave as only a prince can be.’  I should say, ’You see that circumstances have thrown this girl upon the world, practically alone—­on the hard, hard upper-class world—­with only one heart to break.  It is only men who have a whole row of hearts on a shelf, and, when one is broken, they take down another, made, perhaps, of ambition, or sport, or the love of a different sort of woman—­and, vogue la galere, they go on just as well as they did before.’”

“And my accomplished aunt . . .” suggested Cartoner.

“Would laugh at me, I know that.  I would rather have Lady Orlay’s laugh than another woman’s tears.  And so would you; for you are a man of common-sense, though deadly dull in conversation.”

As if to prove the truth of this assertion, Deulin was himself silent until they had ascended St. James’s Street and turned to the left in Piccadilly; and, sure enough, Cartoner had nothing to say.  At last he broke the silence, and made it evident that he had been placidly following the stream of his own thoughts.

“Who is Joseph P. Mangles?” he asked, in his semi-inaudible monotone.

“An American gentleman—­the word is applicable in its best sense—­who for his sins, or the sins of his forefathers, has been visited with the most terrible sister a man ever had.”

“So much I know.”

Deulin turned and looked at his companion.

“Then you have met him—­that puts another complexion on your question.”

“I have just crossed the Atlantic in the next chair to him.”

“And that is all you know about him?”

Cartoner nodded.