Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson

“ The marquise smiled indulgently.
“I love you too much to give you any other,” she replied softly, and then, with well-concealed relief as De Raimbault at that moment entered the room: “But see, here is that poor Albert longing for a word from you. Give him one smile and make him happy.”
She kissed Nancy and glided away with that sinuous movement peculiar to her, and which her friends compared to the walk of a sylph and her enemies to that of a panther.
Left alone with the countess, Albert De Raimbault came quickly forward to her side. There was a certain suppressed excitement in his manner. ”

“ But Nancy did not notice that little touch. It was all very real to her. She was wonderfully ingenuous for a woman of the world. In spite of all that she had been through, all the disillusion that had been forced upon her, she still retained much of the guilelessness of her girlhood—the bloom had not yet been rubbed off; perhaps it never would be. And now she really believed in the single-heartedness of Albert De Raimbault's protestations, and was almost as ready to accept his offer of assistance as she would have that of one of her former American friends. ”

“ At this moment Albert De Raimbault, who had been gazing fixedly at the largest fragment of the torn telegram, which he had detached from the others with his shoe, suddenly picked it up, rose to his feet, and advancing to the Baxter family, with an enigmatical smile extended it to Nancy. ”