“I think I must be awfully wicked, Frank,” she said to him once.  “I love you so dearly, and yet I wouldn’t marry you for anything!” And then she ran on as to whether she ought to take Souvary and live in Paris or Lord Comyngs and choose London.  “It’s so hard to decide,” she said, “and it’s so important, because one couldn’t change one’s mind afterwards.”

“Not very well,” said Frank.

“You mustn’t grind your teeth so loud,” she said.  “It’s compromising.”

“I wish you would talk about something else or go away,” he said, goaded out of his usual politeness.

“Oh, I love my little stolen tete-a-tetes with you!” she exclaimed.  “All those other men are used up, emotionally speaking.  The count would turn a neat phrase even if he were to blow his brains out the next minute.  They think they are splendidly cool, but it only means that they have exhausted all their powers of sensation.  You are delightfully primitive and unspoiled, and then I suppose it is natural to like a fellow-countryman best, isn’t it?  Now, honest—­have you found any girls over here you like as well as me?”

“I haven’t tried to find any,” said Frank.

“You aren’t a bit disillusioned, are you?” she said.  “You simply shut your eyes and go it blind.  A woman likes that in a man.  It’s what love ought to be.  It’s silly of me to throw it away.”

“Perhaps it is, Florence,” he said.  “Who knows but what some day you may regret it?”

“I often think of that,” she returned.  “I am afraid all the good part of me loves you, and all the bad loves the counts and dukes and earls, you know.  And the good is almost drowned in all the rest, like vegetables in vegetable soup.”

She excelled in giving such little dampers to sentiment, and laughed heartily at Frank’s discomfiture.

“You can be awfully cruel,” he said.  “I wonder you can be so beautiful when you can think such things and say them.  You treat hearts like toys and laugh when you break them.”

“Well, there’s one thing, Frank,” she said seriously.  “I have never pretended to you or tried to appear better than I am; and you are the only man I can say that to and not lie!”

 IV

The comte de Souvary, towards whom Florence betrayed an inclination that seemed at times to deserve a warmer word, was a French gentleman nearing forty.  He was a man of distinguished appearance, with all the gaiety, grace, and charm that, in spite our popular impression to the contrary, are not seldom found amongst the nobles of his country.  His undoubted wealth and position redeemed his suit from any appearance of being inspired by a mercenary motive.  Indeed, he was accustomed himself to be pursued, and Florence and he recognised in each other a fellowship of persecution.

“We are ze Pale Faces,” he would say, “and ze ozzers zey are Indians closing in from every corner of ze Far Vest for our scalps!”