But she was not, as she seemed, out of touch with human affairs. She was not especially interested in them, but nothing escaped her shrewd French eye. Believing me to be Miss Pride’s secretary and nothing more, she spoke unguardedly of the household. “Mon dieu, that bridegroom! Angel, he is a fool, I’m telling you. Mamselle Thérèse don’t need to make his acquaintance to know that like she knows the palm of her own hand. She only has to contact the fiancée, ne c’est pas? That rich renarde.”

“Why do you say she is a renarde?” I asked.

“You can tell by the eyes. They are sub-zero. You know? It is on her part a mariage de convenance.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because they haven’t slept together. And how does Mamselle Thérèse know that?” She tapped her forehead. “Par intuition.”

“But perhaps it is a mariage de convenance on his part too?” I suggested.

“Maybe. Yes, maybe. It is a cold place, this Boston. He marries her because she is rich, beautiful, what-not. Because a doctor should have a wife. She marries him because she is enceinte, ne c’est pas.”

I should have laughed and denied the charge, but I was so astounded at the woman’s wizardry that I could not gather my wits together for a moment and when I did, knowing that her conviction was not only right but that I could in no way shake her from it, I said, “You may be right, but I beg you to say nothing to anyone. It would kill Miss Pride.”

Mamselle Thérèse was offended. “Why should Mamselle Thérèse gossip? She is here for the money. She don’t care a damn about the mariage. Angel, it is a dirty business and not for me. This little up-and-coming couturière stays single, I’m telling you. Plenty of boyfriends and not a husband. Don’t mix business with pleasure, angel. So why should she interfere with someone else’s mariage? Mamselle Thérèse won’t talk to the interested parties. She is interested only in the money from the interested parties.”

We were sitting in my room at the time of this conversation and it was rather late, perhaps eleven o’clock. Both Miss Pride and Hopestill had gone out for the evening. Presently we heard light footsteps coming up the last flight of stairs and Hopestill’s door was opened. Evidently she had come back to get something for in ten minutes, she went out again and back down the stairs. Mamselle Thérèse, not so much through the fear of being overheard as through boredom with the subject, dropped it instantly on hearing the footsteps and began telling me about a new costume she had designed for nuns which would be at once more sanitary and more beautiful than their present ones. She had interviewed innumerable Mother Superiors and had written to various bishops and to the secretary of the Archbishop of New York. As she had what is aptly known as “total recall,” she repeated verbatim each conversation, each letter, and each reply, all of which seemed, on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities, to be stubbornly hostile to her proposition.