capital breakfast spread under the trees, and twenty or thirty finely dressed women just holding their sides as though they would die of the spectacle. As for Sir Nicolas, he was standing before them with a look on his face as if he could strike them all dead where they sat. And talking to him was Jack Ames and a little, clean-shaven chap that I recognized as Louis Regnard.
"Permit me," says Jack Ames, bowing very low, while all the others went on with their laughing, "to present to you the Chevalier Eugene Grevin, alias M. Louis Regnard of the Theatre du Vaudeville. The Baroness de Moncy is yonder, resting under the trees. She is known sometimes as Juliette Vauloo, of the Théâtre de l'Opéra Comique."
"Hoaxed by !" says Sir Nicolas; and with this he fairly bolted out of the garden.
••••••
What did they make out of it? Well, reckoning the three dinners he stood Jack Ames while his head was full of the picture, and the dinner that he gave to Rudolphe and Mimi Marcel, and all the champagne that had been drunk during the week, it wasn't a bad thing; to say nothing of him playing billiards with Ames. The egg they sent him wasn't worth a sovereign. It was lined with lead.
And that reminds me. I heard of the real Baroness de Moncy the other day. She hadn't set foot out of Portugal for three years, and is a white-haired old woman, much troubled with rheumatics.
