Monsieur Roché waltzed divinely, and so thoroughly original was that charming man that he never once made allusion to either the crush or the heat. Yet they were both insufferable.
We strolled into the conservatory, and, taking my fan from my hand, he gently waved it before me, keeping time to the distant strains of the waltz, which we preferred to sit out.
"To be beautiful and accomplished," he murmured, as he seated himself beside me, "is no excuse for idleness when a woman is also brilliant."
I recognized the prelude to a commission, and became attentive, for I was ennui of the tiring pleasures that make up the daily routine of the existence of a woman of fashion.
"It is different from the English affair," he whispered, reflectively.
"And so it need be!" I replied, a little testily, for Gaspard Levivé and I had been somewhat ill at ease with each other since we journeyed tête-à-tête from London to Paris.
"It is what a woman's soul craves for—romance."
"A commission from Monsieur le Premier, and yet romantic," I cried, with a laugh. "Monsieur fears to plead his own cause, and would send a persuasive ambassador, n'est ce pa?"
"One as skilful in tact and diplomacy as she is in herself perfection," the flatterer answered; and then, "It is not a service to myself," he added, somewhat stiffly, for my bachelor friend was sensitive on these little matters, and rather prided himself on a flattering unction that he laid to his soul, that no woman in Paris—but I wander, for as he spoke I took my fan abruptly from his hand, and gazed severely right through his perplexed face into the ballroom beyond.
"I fail to understand," I said, stonily. "A commission from some one else? Are my services, then, at the command of any one who condescends to require them?"