“Ah, madame,” sighed the baron, “it is a situation of infinite delicatesse. The scales are so nicely balanced that a breath will sway them. If I could only comprehend the psychology of the American young woman. Does she know more than she should, or less than she should? What really goes on inside her head? I confess I sometimes grow confused talking to this one! Then there is the prince,” added the baron, sighing again. “He is already married.”
“I have heard so,” nodded the countess.
“Morganatically—which is, of course, no marriage at all, and much better than indiscriminate affairs. It is, as I have explained to the mother, like marrying a man who has been divorced. Americans do not object to that. But what I fear—what must not take place—is a scene, an encounter. That would ruin everything.”
“She is here, then?”
“She is at the Hotel de Paris. She goes by the name of Madame Ghita.”
“The prince sees her?”
“But of course. He has been extraordinarily faithful. That is what I meant when I said that his affair had become too serious. But I can manage that—he will not dare disobey his grandfather.”
“Well,” asked the countess a little impatiently, “what is it you want me to do?”
“Two things,” said the baron. “You will permit me to introduce you to Madame Davis and her daughter. You are the sort of friend they need to instruct them in savoir faire, to make of them, so far as it is possible, women of the world. You will show them the absurdity of the provincial point of view.”
“Yes; and the other?”