For some time past he had been as discreetly attentive as circumstances permitted to a young girl, the only child of a potent financier, and on that particular evening he had sat out the cotillon with her at an assembly. She was very pretty and, unusual as it may seem in a débutante, rather coy. But when, a half-hour before, he had wished her sweet dreams in that seductive manner for which he was famous, she had allowed the tips of her fingers to rest in his own just one fleeting second longer than was necessary, and, what is more to the point, had looked into his eyes something which now, under the influence of the brandy-and-soda, seemed almost a promise. "Dear little soul!" he muttered; "if she marries me I will refuse her nothing. It will be the devil's own job, though, to get her any sort of an engagement ring. Tiffany, perhaps, might give me one on credit, but it will have to be something very handsome, something new; not that tiresome solitaire. Those stones I saw the other day—H'm! I wonder what that fellow is staring at me for?"
He lounged forward to where the men were seated, and, being asked to draw a chair, graciously accepted the invitation and another brandy-and-soda as well.
"It was this way," the stranger exclaimed, excitedly, when he and Jones had been introduced. "I was telling these gentlemen when you came in that you looked like the Grand Duke Sergius—"
"Thank you," the novelist answered, affably. "The same to you."
"I never saw him though," the stranger continued.
"No more have I."
"Only his picture."
"Your remark, then, was doubly flattering."
"But the picture to which I allude was that of a chimerical grand duke."
"Really, sir, really you are overwhelming."