"Yes, I met him in Rome one winter; and after that I saw a good deal of him for a couple of seasons."
"Was he received?"
"Oh, bless you, yes. He's real. His family tree goes back to the tree in the Garden of Eden."
"Perhaps his ancestor then was the third person there."
Mrs. Neligage laughed, and shook her head.
"Come, Letty," she said, "that is taking an unfair advantage. But really, the Count is all right. He's as poor as a church mouse, and I've no doubt he came over here expressly to marry money. That is a foreign nobleman's idea of being driven to honest toil,—to come to America and hunt up an heiress."
Mrs. Harbinger produced the letter which she had received from Barnstable earlier in the afternoon.
"That crazy Mr. Barnstable that made an exhibition of himself at my house yesterday has given me a letter about the Count. I haven't read much of it; but it's evidently an attack on the man's morals."
"Oh, his morals," Mrs. Neligage returned with a pretty shrug; "nobody can find fault with the Count's morals, my dear, for he hasn't any."
"Is he so bad then?" inquired Mrs. Harbinger with a sort of dispassionate interest.