"Eh ben! tu sais!" she exclaimed suddenly, with a savage gleam in her eyes.
I turned and gazed at her in astonishment. It was the first time I had heard her voice. It was her accent that made me stare.
"Eh ben! tu sais!" she repeated, in the patois of the Normand peasant, lifting her riding crop in warning to the ball of fluff who had refused to get on his chair and was now wriggling in apology.
"Who is that lady?" I asked the old waiter Emile, who was serving me.
"Madame is an Austrian," he confided to me, bending his fat back as he poured my coffee.
"Austrian, eh! Are you certain, Emile?"
"Parbleu, monsieur" replied Emile, "one is never certain of any one in Paris. I only tell monsieur what I have heard. Ah! it is very easy to be mistaken in Paris, monsieur. Take, for instance, the lady in deep mourning, with the two little girls, over there at the table under the lilac bush."
"She is young to be a widow," I interposed, glancing discreetly in the direction he nodded.
Emile smiled faintly. "She is not a widow, monsieur," he returned, "neither is she as Spanish as she looks; she is Polish and dances at the Folies Parisiennes under the name of La Belle Gueritta from Seville."