Why I made this stipulation of a week I do not know.  Directly I had posted the letter I felt the time could never pass.  It was with the greatest difficulty I prevented myself from sending a telegram of three words:  “Come now.  To-day.”  How would he find me looking?  Would he, too, think I had improved in appearance?  I had grown an inch, it seemed to me.  I was never very short, but now, at five feet seven, he could not call me “little Comtesse” any more.  Oh, to hear his dear voice!  To look into his greeny-blue, beautiful eyes!  Oh, I fear no advice in the world of a hundred marquises could keep me from Antony much longer!

Would Wednesday never come?  The Wednesday in August after the Coronation, that was the day I had fixed for our meeting.

Should I be out, and leave a message for him to follow me into the gardens, or should I quietly stay in my sitting-room?  What should we say to each other?  I must be very calm, of course, and appear perfectly indifferent, and we must not speak upon any subjects but the pictures here, and our mutual friends, and the pleasure of Paris, and the health of the dogs.

He had replied, immediately: 

“I shall be there, and we can talk of the ancestors—­and other things,” No, there must be no “other things” yet.

But what immense joy all this was to think about for me!  I who had never in all my life been able to do as I pleased.  Now I would nibble at my cake and enjoy its every crumb—­not seize and eat it all at once.

On Tuesday morning I got a telegram from Lady Tilchester, sent from Paris.  I had written to her some days before.  She had run over to Ritz for a week, she said, to recover from her fatigues of the Saturday, and would I come into town, and lunch with her that day at half-past twelve?

With delight I started in my automobile.  I had not seen her for months.

“Oh, you beautiful thing!” she exclaimed, when we met, “I have never seen such a change in any one.  You are like an opening rose, a glorious, fresh flower.”

She looked tired, I thought, but fascinating as ever.  We lunched together in the restaurant, and had a long conversation.

She told me an amusing story of the American Lady Luffton, whom she had seen the day before.  An expected family event had prevented her from gracing the Coronation.

“My dear”—­and Lady Tilchester imitated her voice exactly—­“it is a dispensation of Providence that circumstances did not permit me to attend this ceremony.  You Englishwomen would have gone anyhow; but we Americans are different.  But, I say, it is a dispensation of Providence, as I am considerably contented with Luffy and my position up to the present time.  But if I had gotten there, stuffed behind with the baronesses, and had seen those duchesses marching along with their strawberry-leaves ahead of me, I kinder think I should have had a fit of dyspepsia right there in the Abbey.”