"As gallant as ever, Count. It is good of you to remember me after so many years."
The Count regarded her with a look so earnest that he might easily be supposed to remember from the past, whatever and whenever it had been, many things of interest. Miss Wentstile surveyed the pair with an expression of keen suspicion.
"Louisa," she demanded, "where did you know the Count?"
The Count tried to speak, but Mrs. Neligage was too quick for him.
"It was at—Where was it, Count? My memory for places is so bad," she returned mischievously.
"Yees," he said eagerly. "Eet weel have been Paris certainement, ees eet not?"
She laughed more teasingly yet, and glanced swiftly from him to Miss Wentstile. She was evidently amusing herself, though the simple question of the place of a former meeting might not seem to give much opportunity.
"That doesn't seem to me to have been the place," she remarked. "Paris? Let me see. I should have said that it was—"
The remark was not concluded, for down went the Count's teacup with a splash and a crash, with startings and cries from the ladies, and a hasty drawing away of gowns. Miss Endicott, who had listened carefully to the talk, took the catastrophe coolly enough, but with a darkening of the face which seemed to show that she regarded the accident as intentional. The Count whipped out his handkerchief, and went down on his knee instantly to wipe the hem of Miss Wentstile's spattered frock; while Mrs. Neligage seemed more amused than ever.
"Oh, I am deesconsolate forever!" the Count exclaimed, in tones which were pathetic enough to have made the reputation of an actor. "I am broken een de heart, Mees Wentsteele."