got her chances to give singing lessons, and me to do translating, and
painting _menus_. We were happy again, after a while, in spite of all,
and people were so good to us! Mamma used to hold a kind of _salon_,
with all the brightest and best crowding to it, though they got nothing
but sweet biscuits, _vin ordinaire_, and conversation--and besides, the
house might have taken a fancy to fall down on their heads any minute.
It was sporting of them to come at all!"

"And the cousins. Did they come?"

"Not they! They're of the society of the little Brothers and Sisters of
the Rich. Their set was quite different from ours. But when mamma died
nearly two years ago, and I was alone, they did call, and Cousin Emily
offered me a home. I was to give up all my work, of course, which she
considered degrading, and was simply to make myself useful to her as a
daughter of the house might do. That was what she _said_."

"You accepted?"

"Yes. I didn't know her and her husband as well as I do now; and before
she died mamma begged me to go to them, if they asked me. That was when
Monsieur Charretier came on the scene--at least, he came a few months
later, and I've had no peace since. Lately, things were growing more and
more impossible, when my best friend, Comtesse de Nesle, came to my
rescue and found (or thought she'd found) me this engagement with the
Princess. As I told you, I simply ran away--_sneaked_ away--and came
here without any one but Pamela knowing. And now she--the Comtesse--is
just sailing for New York with her husband."

"The Comtesse de Nesle--that pretty little American! I've met her in