“Ah!—so he said.”
“Surely you do not blame him for that? Why do you not amuse yourself in his absence?”
“With whom, pray?”
“If the gallants of the city could but hear you!”
“Perhaps I would endeavor to find amusement in any other place than this. Truly I am dazed with ennui.”
“I know, I know! I have not lived elsewhere myself for nothing. These ridiculous provincials forget that the Nevsky Prospekt and the Boulevards were ancient ways when King and Queen streets were Indian trails and the Battery a sandbank.”
She gazed into the glowing fire and fell into a retrospection; the path of memory led from the past to the present, so she said after a time:
“I heard something to-day that may interest you.”
“I thought there was scandal in the wag of your turban, and gossip in the tap of your cane.”
“Oh, you did? Well, you are an impudent baggage, madam. This is neither the one nor the other, yet, inasmuch as recounted to an indiscreet ear it might cause both, I think I should not repeat it.”