Rose had met her a number of times before the incident referred to
happened, but had always surveyed the lioness from afar. What could she,
whose acquaintance with Europe was limited to one three-months trip,
undertaken by the family during the summer after she graduated from high
school, have to say to an omniscient cosmopolite like that?

So she hung about, within ear-shot when it was possible, and watched,
leaving the active duties of entertainment to heavily cultured
illuminati like the Howard Wests, or to clever creatures like Hermione
Woodruff and Frederica, and Constance Crawford, whose French was good
enough to fill in the interstices in Madame Gréville's English.

She was standing about like that at a tea one afternoon, when she heard
the actress make the remark already quoted, to the effect that American
women seemed to her to be an exception to what she always supposed to be
the general law of sex attraction.

It was taken, by the rather tense little circle gathered around her, as
a compliment; exactly as, no doubt, Gréville intended it to be taken.
But her look flashed out beyond the confines of the circle and
encountered a pair of big luminous eyes, under brows that had a
perplexed pucker in them. Whereupon she laughed straight into Rose's
face and said, lifting her head a little, but not her voice:

"Come here, my child, and tell me who you are and why you were looking
at me like that."

Rose flushed, smiled that irresistible wide smile of hers, and came, not
frightened a bit, nor, exactly, embarrassed; certainly not into