"No, thank heaven! but he might have been killed, and that woman's coquetry would have robbed me of my only remaining child."
"Would you like me to present little Adolphe Kromiousky?"
"Anything that will give you pleasure."
And Monsieur Vermoncey rose and walked hastily into another room, in his eagerness to shun the presence of Madame Baldimer. His host followed him, calling after him:
"Why, where are you going? young Kromiousky is in that room. He won't play anything this evening; but he is studying a fine piece of Paganini's, which he will play on a violin that belonged to Paganini."
Monsieur Vermoncey seated himself in a salon where people were singing and playing the piano; he had been there but a short time, when he saw that Madame Baldimer had again taken a seat facing him, and that her eyes were almost always turned in his direction.
"It's very strange," thought Monsieur Vermoncey; "it looks as if that woman were following me! She looks at me in a most extraordinary way. I wonder if she has been told that I am Albert's father; and if she thinks that it was by my advice that he ceased to see her? Yes, that must be the explanation of her keeping her eyes fixed on me. Does she aspire to force me too to do homage to her charms? I propose to show her that she is wasting her time and trouble."
Monsieur Vermoncey left the music room and went into that where the card playing was in progress, which few ladies visited. There was a vacant seat at a bouillotte table, and he took it, saying to himself:
"That woman is not likely to follow me here."
But he had not been playing five minutes, when the fair American appeared, and seated herself in a chair which was close beside his.