"Then I'll bring the Duchess here to be talked to. It might do her good."
"Oh, do bring the Duchess. I shall be charmed to display for her inspection the best that the Maison has."
"No doubt. But let me give you a tip. Don't waste your time training that dear little Janet girl. She'll learn the deceitful ways of the world fast enough, and no correspondence course needed either."
Janet came up to them as they reached the outer door.
"My dear," said Mrs. Jerome, putting her arm around Janet's waist, "you've given me the best quarter of an hour I've had in Paris these two months. It's been a treat, a royal treat."
As Cornelia beheld these two, standing there intertwined, a strange expression formed on her face, an expression that bespoke an agonizing doubt of the sanity of the universe.
Unheeding her, Mrs. Jerome continued to say to Janet:
"The people I meet everywhere! In Europe they pick my pockets while they lick my boots; in America they rifle my purse with barefaced assurance. You are the first one I've met in a very long time who has talked to me as though I were a human being and not a walking cash box."
III
The conquest of Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome produced a sensation in the Paulette establishment. It also gave an element of security to Janet's precarious tenure of office there.