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against the people: portraits of pale-complected, fashionably overupholstered, red-nosed French aristocrats of eras gone by. This powdered-wig company literally paved the walls, all encased in lacy frills of gilt frames like so many Valentine’s Day offerings.
    Amid all this . . . well, the French do sometimes have the perfect word for it; after all, they invented excess . . . amid all this frou-frou I finally detected a living, contemporary soul.
    She sat alone in the very middle of a long, tapestry-covered Louis XIV sofa with as many gilt legs as a centipede that had wandered through a gold-leaf workshop.
    I was struck by large, deep-set eyes in an oval face furnished with a pleasing generosity of chin and brow. With her dark hair done up in a far more mannered fashion than Irene’s and her girlish figure corseted into a sweet pink evening gown low of neck and almost nonexistent of sleeve, she yet looked as fresh-faced and dewy as any English lass of eighteen. My own former charge, dear Allegra Turnpenny—
    Of course Irene had to step into this picture of dewy innocence in her dark men’s suit and shatter it.
    “My name is Irene Adler-Norton,” she said in that businesslike American way she usually employed with older men of position and power. The greater the difference in Irene’s station and that of those whom she addressed, the less deferential she became. One would think this would turn her betters against her, but it never did. Indeed, they seemed to relish it as a welcome curiosity. There is no doubt that her years upon the stage gave her a formidable advantage in understanding, and manipulating, human nature. “And this is my friend, Penelope Huxleigh,” she continued, brisk but gentle. “We are here to help.”
    All the while Irene was moving into the luxurious scene, a dark, trousered figure from a melodrama almost, save for her flagrantly female face and head of rampant hair.
    She sat on a chair at right angles to the sofa the girl occupied, so I was forced to take the matching chair a full ten feet away.
    “Although I have lived in London, Miss Huxleigh and I now live near Paris. And, of course, I lived in America for many years before I came to Europe.”
    I had never heard Irene chatter so, or reveal so many details of our lives, history, and geography to a total stranger.
    Then I saw that although the girl was the very picture of composure, so still that she might have been sitting for Mr. Whistler, the folded hands on her silken lap were white-knuckled, and her pleasant features had frozen into an expression of such rigid composure it almost reminded me of a classical masque of tragedy.
    A decanter of some dark liquor sat on a silver tray surrounded by short-stemmed crystal glasses. One was half-full. I suspected it was untouched, because the French, extravagant race, are adamant about not filling spirit glasses full in order to let the liquors inside “breathe” and no doubt perform other tricks to seduce the unwary.
    The girl seemed not to notice Irene’s odd manner of dress, or even what she said.
    “What is your name?” Irene asked in the most kindly tone possible.
    The girl glanced at her for the first time, the look of a startled doe upon her face. “Name? Ah . . .”
    “I am called I-reen-ee here abroad, but of course I was simply I-reen in the States. Miss Huxleigh has always been Penelope. Until she met me and I began calling her ‘Nell.’ So what are you called, pray?”
    Again, Irene’s chatter gave the girl time to gather her wits, which were apparently in flight. “They call me Rose here,” she said at last, as if not quite believing her own statement.
    I spoke for the first time, in an encouraging way. “Rose. A lovely name. Very English.”
    The blue-gray eyes feinted in my direction for the first time. “That’s how the French translate my name. At home . . . it really is . . . Pink.”
    “Pink?” I repeated, taken aback by such an inappropriate