"It's in confidence--privileged, as the lawyers say. I sha'n't think the
worse of her--that is, not much."

"Poor Diane," Mr. Grimston began again, sententiously, "is one of the
bits of human wreckage that have drifted down to us from the
pre-revolutionary days of French society. Her grandfather, the old Comte
de la Ferronaise, belonged to that order of irreconcilable royalists who
persist in dashing themselves to pieces against the rising wall of
democracy. I remember him perfectly--a handsome old fellow, who had lost
an arm in the Crimea. He used to do business with us when I was with
Hargous in the rue de Provence. Having impoverished himself in a plot in
favor of the Comte de Chambord, somewhere about 1872, he came utterly to
grief in raising funds for the Boulanger craze, in the train of the
Duchesse d'Uzès. He died shortly afterward, one of the last to break his
heart over the hopeless Bourbon cause."

"That, I understand you to say, was the grandfather of the young woman
who is after money. She's a Frenchwoman, then?"

"She's half French. That was her grandfather. The father was of much the
same type, but a lighter weight. He married an Irish beauty, a Miss
O'Hara, as poor as himself. He died young, I believe, and I'd lost sight
of the lot, till this Mademoiselle Diane de la Ferronaise floated into
view, some five years ago, in the train of the Nohant family. Her
marriage to George Eveleth, which took place almost at once, was looked
upon as an excellent thing all round. It rid the Nohants of a poor
relation, and helped to establish the Eveleths in the heart of the old
aristocracy. Since then Diane has been going the pace."

"What pace?"