"Please don't talk about his youth. He is at least five years older than I am."
"Are you so very aged, my dear?"
"I am old enough, it appears, to be the wife of my young husband."
Stainton kissed her.
"Well said," he declared; "your young husband has been so weather-beaten that he has been a pretty poor sort of spouse lately. We won't worry any more about von Klausen."
Yet to worry about von Klausen they were forced. They seemed, during the next ten days, to meet him everywhere, and he was always so polite that his invitations could not be contumeliously refused. He took them to the opera and to supper afterwards, and they, at last, had to ask him to dine.
It was in the midst of this dinner at Les Fleurs that Stainton, begging his guest's pardon, glanced at a letter that had been handed him as he and Muriel that evening left the hotel.
"Hello," he said, "these French business-men are not so slow, after all. They have drawn the final papers, and I am to sign them to-morrow."
He turned to Muriel.
"So," he said, "I shall have to break our agreement this once, Muriel, and leave you alone for the morning. Will you forgive me?"