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 and cauliflower on their way to the market. They stopped before an imposing house in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and entered.

Judas! exclaimed Grover to himself, livery and everything! as a species of Cossack relieved him of his hat and coat. He had gathered from stray remarks that Floss was a fabulously rich American married to a Balkan prince of sorts.

He mounted a broad flight of stairs behind Léon and the Marchesa and proceeded to a big room, all soft and rosy and buzzing with laughter. Clever looking wrecks in all sorts of elegant and shabby garb were lolling about on plum colored sofas under peach colored lamps. Rich tapestries lined the walls, and under them stood pretty cabinets filled with ancient treasures. At the piano a popular composer of jazz was playing at haphazard while a famous comédienne from the Palais Royal hung over him and tapped out the rhythms with her fingers. A skinny dark woman with a livid face and great eyes shaded with emerald green stared at him and asked her neighbor in clearly audible tones, "Who is that young man with Janvier's tame rabbit?" Grover couldn't be sure whether she wished to poison or abduct him, but he couldn't pursue the matter for he was being introduced to Floss's prince, a handsome nonentity with a good-natured smile.

"I'm just back from a motor trip in the south," he explained to Léon. "It's a curious thing: I've travelled