in return for financial services which had materially helped toward the re-establishment of the throne.  The Countess Cuerbo could now give points as to pride of station to the bluest-blooded grandee.  She associated exclusively with persons of title, and strove, in every possible way, to play the “grande dame.”  She was always bedizened with the most costly diamonds, and so shamelessly rouged that she must have been mobbed had she gone through the Boulevards on foot.  She was not actually plain, but so affected that she did not know what to do with herself, and made such frightful grimaces that one was afraid to look at her.  Nor could she be called stupid, for she had the inborn natural wit of the Andalusians, and when she spoke Spanish, could give very droll turns to her remarks.  Her French was calculated to induce toothache in her hearers, and in the unfamiliar language the wit evaporated and left only the vulgar behind.  She was the terror of her female friends, for she considered absolute freedom of speech to be the privilege and badge of nobility, and thought herself every inch an aristocrat when she alluded, without the faintest regard for decency, not only to her own numerous affairs of gallantry, but to those of her friends to their faces.  Her tactlessness had been the cause of many a disaster, but she remained incorrigible, in spite of repeated and severe snubbings and even bitter insults.

No sooner had she entered the room than Wilhelm received a sample of her peculiar style.  Anne announced the Countess Cuerbo.  Wilhelm rose, prepared to leave Pilar alone, but the visitor had followed on the heels of the maid, and rustled into the red salon, exclaiming in her strident voice and horrible Spanish accent as she embraced Pilar: 

“This is your German friend, I suppose, about whom I have heard so much.  Oh, please don’t go away, I am so curious to know you.”

Wilhelm was dumfounded.  Such calm insolence he had never yet encountered.  Pilar shot a glance of fury at the countess, to which she did not pay the slightest attention, but examined Wilhelm insolently through her gold eyeglasses, and went on with a vulgar laugh: 

“General Varon told me about you, and described you to me.  He thinks you very nice, and I must say I think he is right.”

Pilar’s patience gave out.

“Madame,” she said very dryly, “if Monsieur le Docteur Eynhardt feels himself honored by your astounding familiarities that is his affair.  I do not disguise from you that I think them in very bad taste.”

“Oh, my dear countess,” replied the lady, in no way discomposed by this snub, “don’t be so severe upon me.  I have no designs upon your friend, and you need not be prudish with me.  Surely ladies of our rank have no need to be particular like any little grocer’s wife.”

That was Pilar’s own creed, and before any other audience she would smilingly have agreed with the Countess Cuerbo.  But she pictured to herself what an effect this tone would have upon Wilhelm’s German, middle-class sense of propriety, which she knew so well, and was indignant at her visitor’s cool cynicism.