“Not on the subject of the Vicomte,” she replied promptly.  “I like him.  I like French people.”

“What!” he exclaimed, halting in his steps, “you don’t take that man seriously?”

“I haven’t known him long enough to take him seriously,” said Honora.

“There’s a blindness about women,” he declared, “that’s incomprehensible.  They’ll invest in almost any old thing if the certificates are beautifully engraved.  If you were a man, you wouldn’t trust that Frenchman to give you change for five dollars.”

“French people,” proclaimed Honora, “have a light touch of which we Americans are incapable.  We do not know how to relax.”

“A light touch!” cried Mr. Spence, delightedly, “that about describes the Vicomte.”

“I’m sure you do him an injustice,” said Honora.

“We’ll see,” said Mr. Spence.  “Mrs. Holt is always picking up queer people like that.  She’s noted for it.”  He turned to her.  How did you happen to come here?”

“I came with Susan,” she replied, amusedly, “from boarding-school at Sutcliffe.”

“From boarding-school!”

She rather enjoyed his surprise.

“You don’t mean to say you are Susan’s age?”

“How old did you think I was?” she asked.

“Older than Susan,” he said surveying her.

“No, I’m a mere child, I’m nineteen.”

“But I thought—­” he began, and paused and lighted another cigarette.

Her eyes lighted mischievously.

“You thought that I had been out several years, and that I’d seen a good deal of the world, and that I lived in New York, and that it was strange you didn’t know me.  But New York is such an enormous place I suppose one can’t know everybody there.”

“And—­where do you come from, if I may ask?” he said.

“St. Louis.  I was brought to this country before I was two years old, from France.  Mrs. Holt brought me.  And I have never been out of St. Louis since, except to go to Sutcliffe.  There you have my history.  Mrs. Holt would probably have told it to you, if I hadn’t.”

“And Mrs. Holt brought you to this country?”

Honora explained, not without a certain enjoyment.

“And how do you happen to be here?” she demanded.  “Are you a member of —­of the menagerie?”

He had the habit of throwing back his head when he laughed.  This, of course, was a thing to laugh over, and now he deemed it audacity.  Five minutes before he might have given it another name there is no use in saying that the recital of Honora’s biography had not made a difference with Mr. Howard Pence, and that he was not a little mortified at his mistake.  What he had supposed her to be must remain a matter of conjecture.  He was, however, by no means aware how thoroughly this unknown and inexperienced young woman had read his thoughts in her regard.  And if the truth be told, he was on the whole relieved that she was nobody.  He was just an ordinary man, provided with no sixth sense or premonitory small voice to warn him that masculine creatures are often in real danger at the moment when they feel most secure.