greenroom expressly to offer me her bouquet."

"The young lady in the proscenium box, I will wager," said Lenaieff.

"Precisely. I know that they call her Zibeline, but I did not catch her
real name."

"It is Mademoiselle de Vermont," said Edmond Delorme. "She is, in my
opinion, the most dashing of all the Amazons in the Bois de Boulogne.
The Chevalier de Sainte-Foy brought her to visit my studio last autumn,
and I am making a life-size portrait of her on her famous horse, Seaman,
the winner of the great steeplechase at Liverpool, in 1882."

"What were you pencilling on the back of your menu while you were
talking?" asked the actress, curiously.

"The profile of General de Prerolles," the painter replied. "I think
that his mare Aida would make a capital companion picture for Seaman, and
that he himself would be an appropriate figure to adorn a canvas hung on
the line opposite her at the next Salon!"

"Pardon me, dear master!" interrupted the General. "Spare me, I pray,
the honor of figuring in this equestrian contradance. I have not the
means to bequeath to posterity that your fair model possesses--"

"Is she, then, as rich as they say?" inquired one of the guests.

"I can answer for that," said the Baron de Samoreau. "She has a letter
of credit upon me from my correspondent in New York. Last night, during
an entr'acte, she gave me an order to hold a million francs at her