“I want to talk to you,” he explained.

“But I don’t want to talk to you,” I objected.

“You’ll be sorry if you’re rude.  What I came to say is for your own good.”

“I doubt that!” said I, looking anxiously down one avenue of trees after another, for a figure that would have been doubly welcome now.

“Well, I can easily prove it, if you’ll listen.”

“As you have longer legs than I have, I am obliged to listen.”

“You won’t regret it.  Now, come, my dear little girl, don’t put on any more frills with me.  I’m gettin’ a bit fed up with ’em.”

(I should have liked to choke him with a whole mouthful of “frills,” the paper kind you put on ham at Christmas; but as I had none handy, I thought it would only lead to undignified controversy to allude to them.)

“I had a little conversation about you with the Duchesse de Melun night before last,” Bertie went on, with evident relish.  “Ah, I thought that would make you blush.  I say, you’re prettier than ever when you do that!  It was she began it.  She asked me if I knew your name, and how Lady T. found you.  Her Ladyship couldn’t get any further than ‘Elise,’ for, if she knew any more, she’d forgotten it; but thanks to your friend the shuvver, I could go one better.  When I told the duchess you called yourself d’Angely, or something like that, she said ‘I was sure of it!’ Now, I expect you begin to smell a rat—­what?”

“I daresay you’ve been carrying one about in your pocket ever since,” I snapped, “though I can’t think what it has to do with me.  I’m not interested in dead rats.”

“This is your own rat,” said Bertie, grinning.  “What’ll you give to know what the duchess told me about you?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Well, then, I’ll be generous and let you have it for nothing.  She told me she thought she recognized you, but until she heard the name, she supposed she must be mistaken; that it was only a remarkable resemblance between my stepmother’s maid and a girl who’d run away under very peculiar circumstances from the house of a friend of hers.  What do you think of that?”

“That the duchess is a cat,” I replied, promptly.

“Most women are.”

“In your set, perhaps.”

“She said there was a man mixed up with the story, a rich middle-aged chap of the name of Charretier, with a big house in Paris and a new chateau he’d built, near Fontainebleau.  She gave me a card to him.”

“He’s sure not to be at home,” I remarked.

Bertie’s face fell; but he brightened again.  “Anyhow you admit you know him.”

“One has all sorts of acquaintances,” I drawled, with a shrug of my shoulders.

“You’re a sly little kitten—­if you’re not a cat.  You heard me say I thought of calling at the chateau.”

“And you heard me say the owner wasn’t at home.”

“You seem well acquainted with his movements.”