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"Bonjour, Mademoiselle! Vous etes trés charmante!"
lona stopped and looked up, for her eyes had been on the ground as she picked her way carefully over the dirty, cobbled street. In front of her, barring her way, stood a gentleman. He was dressed in the height of fashion, but neither his clothes nor the rouge and powder with which his face had been carefully embellished could hide the fact that he was elderly.
But if he would disguise his age, the wrinkled Lothario made no attempt to hide the question in his peering, lecherous eyes or the invitation which twisted his thin, reddened lips.
lona drew herself up to her full height, which was not very high, and in a voice as disdainful as she could make it she replied in French:
"You have made a mistake, Monsieur! Permit me to pass!"
But her gesture of dignity had perhaps been a mistake, for as she threw back her head, the dying light of the afternoon revealed the whiteness of her skin, the surprising colour of her eyes and the delicate features which had been half-hidden by the darkness of her fur-trimmed hood.
The rake's smile broadened and he took a step forward over-eagerly. He had not been mistaken; here was loveliness. His sudden movement made lona shrink away from him. She was not really afraid, for she had moved about Paris alone since she had been a child and was accustomed to the roués and the vieux marcheurs who thought that any young woman who walked the streets un-chaperoned was theirs for the taking. Usually she could deal with them effectively and with little trouble to herself, but this evening she was in a part of Paris which she did not know well and she was uneasily aware that she was in-
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