"Why don't you offer me a cigar?" said she, with a killing glance that would have finished any other man in the room on the spot.
"You shall have a dozen," he answered, pulling out a well-filled case in some confusion. "I really didn't know you smoked."
"No more I do," she replied, laughing, "except sometimes a very tiny cigarette. No; I don't want one now; but that's no reason you shouldn't offer it. Don't you know, Mr. Goldthred, that with ladies you should always take the initiative?"
"It's so difficult," he answered doubtfully, sliding into the corner by her side. "One is never sure how far one ought to go, and I have the greatest horror of being a bore."
"There you're wrong," decided Kate;—"women like bores. For the matter of that, so does everybody. Who are the people that get on in society? Bores. Who manage your clubs, your race-meetings, your amusements? Bores. Who make the best marriages, keep the best houses, and insist on having all the pleasant people to dance attendance on them? Bores—bores—bores! They are in the majority, they have the upper hand, and they mean to keep it. Shall I tell you why? A bore is always in earnest; the more in earnest the greater bore! Have I made out my case?"
"At least you have given me a claim to bore you," said Goldthred laughing.
"And without being in earnest," she replied; "though I think you could be very much in earnest with some people. That's why I'm interested in you. That's why I'm going to give you a piece of advice. There is an English proverb I need not repeat about 'a faint heart.' There is a French one more to the purpose, I think in your case, 'il faut se faire valoir.' Now, you mustn't flirt with me any longer. You'll hear of it again if you do, and two of my admirers are looking as black as thunder already. Go and circulate among your guests, but don't forget my advice, and good luck to you!"
Il faut se faire valoir. The words rang in his ears all the evening—through the bustle of breaking up, the noisy departure, the chatter, and clatter, and hurry of the drive back to London—the very wheels seemed to tell it over and over in monotonous refrain, and ere Goldthred was set down at his own door, this sentence and its meaning seemed indelibly impressed on his brain.
Passing through the sitting-room, he found a letter in the well-known handwriting, lying on his table, and although a thrill went through every nerve in his body, I think even then Kate's advice was beginning to bear fruit. On reading the epistle, no doubt, there came a reaction, and his first impulse was to rush at once to No. 40, notwithstanding the hour, the occasion, and the proprieties; his second, to write an answer then and there, expressing love, worship, and devotion with an eloquence none the less burning from the convivialities of a Greenwich dinner-party; his third, and wisest, to let every thing stand over till to-morrow. And then, while he assisted her to the best of his abilities, to teach his scornful lady, quietly but distinctly, that he had learnt by heart this new maxim—Il faut se faire valoir!