“Mademoiselle, I am going away for six months. When I return, I would like to know you better. Your sympathetic face was the only one I was playing to. The rest were all cattle.”
He never came back to our Montreal, and I heard that he died soon after leaving us.
The morning after the party, the old Count was very irritable and cross, and when I asked him if he had enjoyed himself, he exclaimed disgustedly:
“Stupid! Stupid! Those Canadians, do not know the meaning of the word ‘Bohemian.’ It was a ‘pink tea.’ Ugh!”
I suggested that next time we should invite Patty Chase and Lu Fraser, and girls like that, but the Count shook his head with a hopeless gesture.
“That is the other extreme,” he said. “No, no, you, my little friend, are the only one worthy to belong to such a club as I had hoped to start. It is impossible in this so stupid Canada.”
XV
RAT-A-TAT-TAT, on the big iron knocker. I called:
“Come in,” and Mrs. Wheatley, an English woman, accompanied by her daughter, Alice, a pretty girl of fifteen, entered. She came directly over to me, with her hand held out graciously.
“How do you do, Marion? I have been hearing about the Count, and I want you to introduce us.”