M. de Chauxville watched the door close behind Miss Delafield with a
queer smile. Then he turned suddenly on his heels and faced Mrs. Sydney
Bamborough.

"Your cousin," he said, "is a typical Englishwoman--she only conceals
her love."

"For you?" enquired Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.

The baron shrugged his shoulders.

"Possibly. One can never tell. She conceals it very well if it exists.
However, I am indifferent. The virtue of the violet is its own reward,
perhaps, for the rose always wins."

He crossed the room toward Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, who was standing near
the mantelpiece. Her left hand was hanging idly by her side. He took the
white fingers and gallantly raised them to his lips, but before they had
reached that fount of truth and wisdom she jerked her hand away.

M. de Chauxville laughed--the quiet, assured laugh of a man who has read
in books that he who is bold enough can win any woman, and believes it.
He was of those men who treat and speak of women as a class--creatures
to be dealt with successfully according to generality and maxim. It is a
singular thing, by the way, that men as a whole continue to disbelieve
in a woman's negative--singular, that is, when one reflects that the
majority of men have had at least one negative which has remained a
negative, so far as they were concerned, all the woman's life.