on the buffet, solitary, and unlike the others. What a fool had I been!
Those gaps in the Baron's remarks caused by the paving-stones, how
easily were they to be supplied!

"Madame?"

Madame de St. Cyr.

"The cellar?"

A salt-cellar.

How quick the flash that enlightened me while I surveyed the _salière!_

"It is exquisite! Am I never to sit at your table but some new device
charms me?" I exclaimed. "Is it your design, Mademoiselle?" I said,
turning to Delphine.

Delphine, who had been ice to all the Baron's advances, only curled her
lip. "_Des babioles!_" she said.

"Yes, indeed," cried Mme. de St. Cyr, extending her hand for it. "But
none the less her taste. Is it not a fairy thing? A _Cellini!_ Observe
this curve, these lines! but one man could have drawn them!"--and she
held it for our scrutiny. It was a tiny hand and arm of ivory, parting
the foam of a wave and holding a golden shell, in which the salt seemed
to have crusted itself as if in some secretest ocean-hollow. I looked at
the Baron a moment; his eyes were fastened upon the _salière_, and all
the color had forsaken his cheeks,--his face counted his years. The
diamond was in that little shell. But how to obtain it? I had no novice