With my health getting better every day, whatever attractions I had had before by illness soon returned, and the men would have liked to make quite a fuss of me. One old gentleman, well up in the sixties, in particular, paid me a lot of attention. It happened that he sat next to me at meals and he was always pressing me to share his bottle of wine.
He was an Englishman, a Mr. Robert Chapel, and he confided in me that for many years he had been in the diamond business in Hatton Garden, but was now partly retired, giving only expert advice to the big jewellery firms upon the Riviera.
“You see, Mademoiselle,” he said, “handling precious stones as I have been doing for half a century and longer they are now in my blood and—” he bowed gallantly, “—except for the face of a beautiful woman, the
