acquaintance - whom I knew in Paris' last year?'

'As the friend, dear lady, if I may use the term.'

'And you are sure that you would not like first to be conducted to
your apartments?'

'Not yet. I will wait till Dimmock comes; he cannot fail to be here
soon.'

'Then we will have tea served in father's private room - the
proprietor's private room, you know.'

'Good!' he said.

Nella talked through a telephone, and rang several bells, and
behaved generally in a manner calculated to prove to Princes and
to whomever it might concern that she was a young woman of
business instincts and training, and then she stepped down from
her chair of office, emerged from the bureau, and, preceded by two
menials, led Prince Aribert to the Louis XV chamber in which her
father and Felix Babylon had had their long confabulation on the
previous evening.

'What do you want to talk to me about?' she asked her companion,
as she poured out for him a second cup of tea. The Prince looked
at her for a moment as he took the proffered cup, and being a
young man of sane, healthy, instincts, he could think of nothing for
the moment except her loveliness.