"Yes, your Highness," answered Mr. Todd, "unless Mr. Le Beau here is the exception."
"Mister Le Beau," repeated Haganè, very distinctly. "I remember with much clearness the meeting with Mister Le Beau. In your admirable dwelling in the capital city of Washington that meeting took place. Yuki—Miss Onda—performed the introduction ceremony. I remember well."
"And I, your Highness," instantly answered Pierre, with a succession of the sprightly bows that had so incensed old Onda. "It is to be supposed that I should bear in memory so great an event; but I could not have dared to hope for so great a condescension from you."
Haganè replied by a smile and a nod. The latter might have served equally for the kerai who, well within the shadow of Mrs. Todd, made vehement signs of corroboration to his daimyo.
The host then asked of the party, "Shall I not order for you foreign chairs? We keep them in the storehouse for such occasions."
"Thank you kindly, Prince," answered Mrs. Todd for all; "we'll take the floor. In Rome we do as the Romans do." With a lunge the good lady disposed herself in the centre of the apartment, sitting, as it were, at her own feet. The others placed themselves near her, making roughly the outline of a horseshoe, Dodge being at one end, with Yuki beside him, and Prince Haganè at the other.
Gwendolen had with difficulty kept Pierre away from Yuki. "Remember," she had warned, "this may be a sort of Sherlock Holmes affair for making you two betray yourselves and each other. You can't be too careful. Old Haganè is a vibrating lodestone of uncanny intuition, and Onda a parental avalanche just ready to slide!"
In the effort to keep his hungry eyes from Yuki, Pierre began to explore the room. His attention was first caught by the arrangement of dwarf pine branches and brown cones, in combination with straggling sprays of a yellow orchid. Then he saw the three paintings beyond. "Saint Raphael! what are those?" he murmured under his breath, and made as if to rise from the floor. All turned to him; he sought only the eyes of his host. "Your Highness," he pleaded, his face vital with intelligence, "if not unpardonably rude, may I rise and examine more closely those marvellous paintings?"
Haganè reflected a hint of his brightness. "With greatest pleasure. They are, of course, hung to be seen. I am honored that they attract your notice."
Pierre rushed to the tokonoma, taking instinctively the attitudes of a self-forgetting connoisseur.