"Yes, but they read the best too; and the worst don't seem to hurt them. I'll warrant that Mees Gay—that is her name, is it not?—has read Zola, for instance; and yet, see how simple and innocent—yes—innocent, she looks."
"Yes, the innocence of experience—which knows how to hide," said
Monsieur d'Agreste, with a slight shrug.
"Mees Gay!" the countess cried out across the table, suddenly waking from her somnolence; she had overheard the baroness in spite of the low tone in which the dialogue had been carried on; her voice was so mellifluously sweet, one instinctively scented a touch of hidden poison in it—"Mees Gay, there is a question being put at this side of the table you alone can answer. Pray pardon the impertinence of a personal question—but we hear that American young ladies read Zola; is it true?"
"I am afraid that we do read him," was Charm's frank answer. "I have read him—but my reading is all in the past tense now."
"Ah—you found him too highly seasoned?" one of the young counts asked, eagerly, with his nose in the air, as if scenting an indiscretion.
"No, I did not go far enough to get a taste of his horrors; I stopped at his first period."
"And what do you call his first period, dear mademoiselle?" The countess's voice was still freighted with honey. Her husband coughed and gave her a warning glance, and Renard was moving uneasily in his chair.
"Oh," Charm answered lightly, "his best period—when he didn't sell."
Everyone laughed. The little widow cried beneath her breath:
"Elle a de l'esprit, celle-là—-"