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 decide what kind of animal the Girl Scouts of America should present to the Bronx Zoo. I think, she murmured to herself, that I shall recommend a garter snake. A characteristic note from Lalla Draycott she dropped after glancing at a line or two. At the bottom of the heap, or as near the bottom as Campaspe ever penetrated, she discovered a large envelope from the Ritz, addressed in a feeble, scrawling hand, which she did not immediately recognize. On examination it proved to be from the Countess Nattatorrini who, it seemed, had arrived in New York.

Campaspe had met the Countess one afternoon several years before at the hôtel of the Duchess of Guermantes. The occasion, on the whole, had been dull enough; still, Campaspe had derived a certain oblique entertainment from listening to Oriane discuss the peculiar reasons why she could and did know certain people and the still better reasons why she could not know others. Presently, the Countess, who even then must have been in her seventies, had gravitated towards her, believing her doubtless to be a person of some importance, as she was the only American, with the exception of her titled self, she had ever known Oriane to invite to her house. The curious confusion of grande dame and courtesan which Campaspe had at once sensed in the countenance of this elderly lady had caused her to make an effort to create a sympathetic atmosphere, which had proved sufficiently alluring so that the Countess