Good-night!" and I shut the door on the sound of a pleased, excited giggling.

I love to hear such sounds; they make me laugh myself, for joy that this old world, in spite of everything, holds so much merriment; and to their jovial lullaby I fell asleep, Moreover--the duchess teaching discretion! There can have been nothing like it since Baby Charles and Steenie conversed within the hearing of King James! But, then discretion has two meanings--whereof the one is "Do it not," and the other "Tell it not." Considering of this ambiguity, I acquitted the duchess of hypocrisy.
At ten o'clock the next morning we got rid of my dear friend Gustave de Berensac.

Candor compels me to put the statement in that form; for the gravity which had fallen upon him the night before endured till the morning, and he did not flinch from administering something very like a lecture to his hostess.

His last words were an invitation to me to get into the carriage and start with him.

When I suavely declined, he told me that I should regret it.