And then Mrs. Arbuthnot's voice is heard at last. "My husband and Mr. Dallas have only just come back from Paris, Miss Burton. Mr. Dallas went over on business, and my husband accompanied him. They had a most interesting time: they spent a whole day at the Prefecture of Police with the Prefect himself—"
She stops speaking, and wonders a little why a sudden silence has fallen over the whole group of these pleasant Americans—for she takes Nancy to be an American too.
But the sudden silence—so deep, so absolute that it reminds Mrs. Arbuthnot of the old saying that when such a stillness falls on any company someone must be walking over their graves—is suddenly broken.
Mr. Dallas jumps to his feet. He is one of those men who never like sitting still very long. "May I have another lump of sugar, Miss Burton? We were speaking of Paris,—talk of muzzling the press, they know how to muzzle their press in grim earnest in Paris! Talk of suppressing the truth, they don't even begin to tell the truth there. The Tsar of Russia as an autocrat isn't in it with the Paris Prefect of Police!"
And two of his listeners say drearily to themselves that Mr. Dallas is a very ignorant man after all. He is evidently one of the many foolish people who believe the French police omnipotent.
But the Englishman goes happily on, quite unconscious that he is treading on what has become forbidden ground in the Burton family circle. "The present man's name is Beaucourt, a very pleasant fellow! He told me some astounding stories. I wonder if you'd like to hear the one which struck me most?"
He looks round, pleased at their attention, at the silence which has again fallen on them all, and which he naturally takes for consent.
Eagerly he begins: "It was two years ago, at the height of their Exhibition season, and of course Paris was crammed—every house full, from cellar to attic! Monsieur Beaucourt tells me that there were more than five hundred thousand strangers in the city for whose safety, and incidentally for whose health, he was responsible!"
He waits a moment, that thought naturally impresses him more than it does his audience.
"Well, into that gay maelstrom there suddenly arrived a couple of young foreigners. They were well-to-do, and what impressed the little story particularly on Monsieur Beaucourt's mind was the fact that they were on their honeymoon—you know how sentimental the French are!"