“Your hope, Mr. Harleston, is also mine. But why, may I ask, do you call me mademoiselle? I’m not French.”

“It’s the pleasantest way to address you until I know your name.”

“You might call me madame!”

“Perish the thought! I refuse to imagine you married.”

“I might be a widow.”

“No.”

“Or even a divorcée.”

“And you might be a grandmother,” he added.

“Yes.”

“And doing the Maxixe at the Willard, this minute.”