an instant and then, without a shade of difference in his careless gait,
advanced to the accompaniment of a thin recognition. It was the first
time they had met since their encounter in the forest after Longmore's
false start for Brussels. Madame Clairin's revelations, as he might have
regarded them, had not made the Count especially present to his mind; he
had had another call to meet than the call of disgust. But now, as M. de
Mauves came toward him he felt abhorrence well up. He made out, however,
for the first time, a cloud on this nobleman's superior clearness, and a
delight at finding the shoe somewhere at last pinching HIM, mingled with
the resolve to be blank and unaccommodating, enabled him to meet the
occasion with due promptness.

M. de Mauves sat down, and the two men looked at each other across the
table, exchanging formal remarks that did little to lend grace to their
encounter. Longmore had no reason to suppose the Count knew of his
sister's various interventions. He was sure M. de Mauves cared very
little about his opinions, and yet he had a sense of something grim in
his own New York face which would have made him change colour if keener
suspicion had helped it to be read there. M. de Mauves didn't change
colour, but he looked at his wife's so oddly, so more than naturally
(wouldn't it be?) detached friend with an intentness that betrayed at
once an irritating memory of the episode in the Bois de Boulogne and
such vigilant curiosity as was natural to a gentleman who had entrusted
his "honour" to another gentleman's magnanimity--or to his artlessness.

It might appear that these virtues shone out of our young man less
engagingly or reassuringly than a few days before; the shadow at any
rate fell darker across the brow of his critic, who turned away and
frowned while lighting a cigar. The person in the coupe, he accordingly
judged, whether or no the same person as the heroine of the episode of