Palmet accepted the statement.  ’Though I shall never care to figure before peeresses,’ he said.  ’I can’t tell you why.  There’s a heavy sprinkling of the old bird among them.  It isn’t that.  There’s too much plumage; I think it must be that.  A cloud of millinery shoots me off a mile from a woman.  In my opinion, witches are the only ones for wearing jewels without chilling the feminine atmosphere about them.  Fellows think differently.’  Lord Palmet waved a hand expressive of purely amiable tolerance, for this question upon the most important topic of human affairs was deep, and no judgement should be hasty in settling it.  ‘I’m peculiar,’ he resumed.  ’A rose and a string of pearls:  a woman who goes beyond that’s in danger of petrifying herself and her fellow man.  Two women in Paris, last winter, set us on fire with pale thin gold ornaments—­neck, wrists, ears, ruche, skirts, all in a flutter, and so were you.  But you felt witchcraft.  “The magical Orient,” Vivian Ducie called the blonde, and the dark beauty, “Young Endor."’

‘Her name?’ said Beauchamp.

’A marquise; I forget her name.  The other was Countess Rastaglione; you must have heard of her; a towering witch, an empress, Helen of Troy; though Ducie would have it the brunette was Queen of Paris.  For French taste, if you like.’

Countess Rastaglione was a lady enamelled on the scroll of Fame.  ’Did you see them together?’ said Beauchamp.  ‘They weren’t together?’

Palmet looked at him and laughed.  ’You’re yourself again, are you?  Go to Paris in January, and cut out the Frenchmen.’

‘Answer me, Palmet:  they weren’t in couples?’

‘I fancy not.  It was luck to meet them, so they couldn’t have been.’

‘Did you dance with either of them?’

Unable to state accurately that he had, Palmet cried, ’Oh! for dancing, the Frenchwoman beat the Italian.’

‘Did you see her often—­more than once?’

’My dear fellow, I went everywhere to see her:  balls, theatres, promenades, rides, churches.’

‘And you say she dressed up to the Italian, to challenge her, rival her?’

’Only one night; simple accident.  Everybody noticed it, for they stood for Night and Day,—­both hung with gold; the brunette Etruscan, and the blonde Asiatic; and every Frenchman present was epigramizing up and down the rooms like mad.’

’Her husband ‘s Legitimist; he wouldn’t be at the Tuileries?’ Beauchamp spoke half to himself.

‘What, then, what?’ Palmet stared and chuckled.  ’Her husband must have taken the Tuileries’ bait, if we mean the same woman.  My dear old Beauchamp, have I seen her, then?  She’s a darling!  The Rastaglione was nothing to her.  When you do light on a grand smoky pearl, the milky ones may go and decorate plaster.  That’s what I say of the loveliest brunettes.  It must be the same:  there can’t be a couple of dark beauties in Paris without a noise about them.  Marquise—?  I shall recollect her name presently.’