"--Is certainly a keen one. If I am not mistaken, when we were in Italy you were content to let your servant bear it; but, venturing among a people so noted for sagacity as the Yankees, I suppose you have fancied it was necessary to go armed cap-á-pié."
Both laughed lightly, as if they equally enjoyed the pleasantry, and then he resumed:
"But I sincerely hope you do not impute improper motives to the incognito?"
"I impute it to that which makes many young men run from Rome to Vienna, or from Vienna to Paris; which causes you to sell the vis-a-vis to buy a dormeuse; to know your friends to-day, and to forget them to-morrow; or, in short, to do a hundred other things that can be accounted for on no other motive."
"And this motive--?"
"--Is simply caprice."
"I wish I could persuade you to ascribe some better reason to all my conduct. Can you think of nothing, in the present instance, less discreditable?"
"Perhaps I can," Eve answered, after a moment of thought; then laughing lightly again, she added, quickly; "But I fear, in exonerating you from the charge of unmitigated caprice, I shall ascribe a reason that does little less credit to your knowledge."
"This will appear in the end. Does Mademoiselle Viefville remember me, do you fancy?"
"It is impossible; she was ill, you will remember, the three months we saw so much of you."