At the same time the voice of the lady spoke to me--I was to have the joy of remembering that this voice had spoken four words to me.
"Je vous remercie, monsieur," it said.
"Pas de quoi!" I murmured.
The American trousers in a loud tone made reference in the idiom to my miserable head: "Did you ever see anything to beat it ?" The beautiful voice answered, and by the gentleness of her sorrow for me I knew she had no thought that I might understand.

"Come away.

It is too pitiful!" Then the grey skirt and the little round-toed shoes beneath it passed from my sight, quickly hidden from me by the increasing crowd; yet I heard the voice a moment more, but fragmentarily: "Don't you see how ashamed he is, how he must have been starving before he did that, or that someone dependent on him needed--" I caught no more, but the sweetness that this beautiful lady understood and felt for the poor absurd wretch was so great that I could have wept.
I had not seen her face; I had not looked up--even when she went.
"Who is she ?" cried a scoundrel voyous, just as she turned.

"Madame of the parasol?
A friend of monsieur of the ornamented head ?" "No.

It is the first lady in waiting to his wife, Madame la Duchesse," answered a second.