 hills near Tolosa, had sent her up at
the age of thirteen or thereabouts for safe keeping. She is of peasant stock,
you know. This is the true origin of the Girl in the Hat and of the Byzantine
Empress which excited my dear mother so much; of the mysterious girl that the
privileged personalities great in art, in letters, in politics or simply in the
world, could see on the big sofa during the gatherings in Allègre's exclusive
Pavilion: the Doña Rita of their respectful addresses, manifest and mysterious,
like an object of art from some unknown period; the Doña Rita of the initiated
Paris. Doña Rita and nothing more - unique and indefinable.« He stopped with a
disagreeable smile.
    »And of peasant stock?« I exclaimed in the strangely conscious silence that
fell between Mills and Blunt.
    »Oh! All these Basques have been ennobled by Don Sanche II,« said Captain
Blunt moodily. »You see coats of arms carved over the doorways of the most
miserable caserios. As far as that goes she's Doña Rita right enough whatever
else she is or is not in herself or in the eyes of others. In your eyes, for
instance, Mills. Eh?«
    For a time Mills preserved that conscious silence.
    »Why think about it at all?« he murmured coldly at last. »A strange bird is
hatched sometimes in a nest in an unaccountable way and then the fate of such a
bird is bound to be ill-defined, uncertain, questionable. And so that is how
Henry Allègre saw her first? And what happened next?«
    »What happened next?« repeated Mr. Blunt, with an affected surprise in his
tone. »Is it necessary to ask that question? If you had asked how the next
happened. ... But as you may imagine she hasn't told me anything about that. She
didn't,« he continued with polite sarcasm, »enlarge upon the facts. That
confounded Allègre, with his impudent assumption of princely airs, must have (I
shouldn't wonder) made the fact of his notice appear as a sort of favour dropped
from Olympus. I really can't tell how the minds and the imaginations of such
aunts and uncles are affected by such rare visitations. Mythology may give us a
hint. There is the story of Danaë, for instance.«
    »There is,« remarked Mills calmly, »but I don't remember any aunt or uncle
in that connection.«
    »And there are also certain stories of the discovery and acquisition
