would not speak nor move, but the smoke of his cigar made a charmed circle around them, and the stars came out above, and the panorama of the great Boulevard moved on at their feet.

Their first difficulties were financial, of course. Suzette would have liked a silken robe, a new bonnet, a paletot, gloves and concomitants unlimited. She delighted to walk upon the Boulevard, the Rue Rivoli, and into the Palais Royal, looking into the shop-windows and selecting what she would buy when Ralph's remittances came. Her hospitality when his friends visited him did less honor to her purse than to her heart. She certainly made excellent punches; Terrapin thought her cigarettes unrivalled; she was fond of cutting a fruit-pie, and was quite a connoisseur with wines. Ralph did not wonder at her tidiness when the laundry bills were presented, but doubted that the coiffeur beautified her hair; and one day, when a cool gentleman in civil uniform knocked at the door, and insisted upon the immediate payment of a bill for fifty francs, he lost his temper and said bad words. What could be done? Suzette was sobbing; Ralph detested "scenes;" he[Pg 111] threatened to leave the hotel and Paris, and frightened her very much—and paid the money.

[Pg 111]

"You said, Suzette, that you had rendered a full account of all your indebtedness. You told me a lie!"

"Poor boy," she replied, "this debt was so old that I never expected to hear of it."

"Have you any more—old or otherwise?"

Suzette said demurely that she did not owe a sou in the world, but was able to recall thirty francs in the course of the afternoon, and assured him, truly, that this was the last.

Still, she lacked economy. They went to the same cremery, but her meals cost one half more than his. She never objected to a ride in a voiture; she liked to go to the balls, but walked very soberly upon his arm, recognizing nobody, and exacting the same behavior from Ralph. Let him look at an unusually pretty girl, through a shop-window, upon his peril! If a letter came for him signed Lizzie, or Annie, or Mary, she took the dictionary and tried to interpret it, and in the end called him a vilain and wept.

Toward the letters signed "Lizzie" she conceived a deep antipathy. With a woman's instinct she discerned that "Lizzie" was more to Ralph than any other correspondent. A single letter satisfied her of this; and when he was reading it, for the second 

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