Denise was looking out of the tall closed windows at the few yards of sky
that were visible above the roofs. Some fleecy clouds were speeding
across the clear ether.

"No," she answered slowly; "I think I shall go to Corsica. Tell me," she
added, after a pause--"I suppose I have Corsican blood in my veins?"

"I suppose so," admitted Mademoiselle Brun, reluctantly.




CHAPTER VI.


NEIGHBOURS.

"Chaque homme a trois caracteres: celui qu'il a, celui qu'il montre,
et celui qu'il croit avoir."


By one of the strokes of good fortune which come but once to the most
ardent student of fashion, the Baroness de Melide had taken up horsiness
at the very beginning of that estimable craze. It was, therefore, in mere
sequence to this pursuit that she fixed her abode on the south side of
the Champs Elysees, and within a stone's throw of the Avenue du Bois de
Boulogne, before the world found out that it was quite impossible to live
elsewhere. It is so difficult, in truth, to foretell the course of
fashion, that one cannot help wondering why the modern soothsayers, who