have giving a great deal if, by some miraculous vision, Mary Kramer and
other friends of his in Cranston could have seen him engaged in what he
thought of as "conversational badinage" with the Comtesse de Vaurigard.

Both the lady and her name thrilled him. He thought he remembered the
latter in Froissart: it conjured up "baronial halls" and "donjon keeps,"
rang resonantly in his mind like "Let the portcullis fall!" At home he
had been wont to speak of the "oldest families in Cranston," complaining
of the invasions of "new people" into the social territory of the
McCords and Mellins and Kramers--a pleasant conception which the
presence of a De Vaurigard revealed to him as a petty and shameful
fiction; and yet his humility, like his little fit of trembling, was
of short duration, for gay geniality of Madame de Vaurigard put him
amazingly at ease.

At Calais young Cooley (with a matter-of-course air, and not seeming to
feel the need of asking permission) accompanied her to a compartment,
and Mellin walked with them to the steps of the coach, where he paused,
murmuring some words of farewell.

Madame de Vaurigard turned to him with a prettily assumed dismay.

"What! You stay at Calais?" she cried, pausing with one foot on the step
to ascend. "Oh! I am sorry for you. Calais is ter-rible!"

"No. I am going on to Paris."

"So? You have frien's in another coach which you wish to be wiz?"

"No, no, indeed," he stammered hastily.