"Women, mademoiselle, make men apt scholars in the art of pleasing. I have studied much."
"How singular!" rejoined the lady. "I should never have detected it."
"True art, mademoiselle, lies in its concealment. My life has been one of concealment."
"Now you pique my curiosity," she replied. "Do let me learn the 'veritable historie.'"
The smile on Mademoiselle Milan's face showed that the interest was feigned, but the grim look about Dupleisis' mouth proved him conscious of it. A man without an object would have changed the subject at once; but Dupleisis had an object, and did not.
"I was ushered into this land of hope and sunny smiles with scarcely any other patrimony than a name."
"What limited resources!" ejaculated the lady, with a slight sneer.
"While blushing with the consciousness of my virgin cravat, I went to Paris, that sacred ark, which saves from shipwreck all the wretched of the provinces if but crowned with a ray of intellect."
"And which saved you, of course," continued the lady.
"Through the influence of my friends, I entered the École Polytechnique, and, after graduating, cut the army, and cast my fate, for better or for worse, in the flowery paths of literature."