on her finger she shuddered, but ever so slightly. No one observed it but La Mère Bauche. “In one week she will be used to it, and then we shall all be happy,” said La Mère to herself. “And I—I will be so kind to her!”

And so the marriage was completed, and the watch was at once given to Marie. “Thank you, maman,” said she, as the trinket was fastened to her girdle. Had it been a pincushion that had cost three sous, it would have affected her as much.

And then there was cake and wine and sweetmeats; and after a few minutes Marie disappeared. For an hour or so the Capitaine was taken up with the congratulations of his friends, and with the efforts necessary to the wearing of his new honours with an air of ease; but after that time he began to be uneasy because his wife did not come to him. At two or three in the afternoon he went to La Mère Bauche to complain. “This lackadaisical nonsense is no good,” he said. “At any rate it is too late now. Marie had better come down among us and show herself satisfied with her husband.”

But Madame Bauche took Marie’s part. “You must not be too hard on Marie,” she said. “She has gone through a good deal this week past, and is very young; whereas, Capitaine, you are not very young.”

The Capitaine merely shrugged his shoulders. In the meantime Mère Bauche went up to visit her protégée in her own room, and came down with a report that she was suffering from a headache. She could not appear at dinner, Madame Bauche said; but would make one at the little party which was to be given in the evening. With this the Capitaine was forced to be content.

The dinner therefore went on quietly without her, much as it did on other ordinary days. And then there was a little time for vacancy, during which the gentlemen drank their coffee and smoked their cigars at the café, talking over the event that had taken place that morning, and the ladies brushed their hair and added some ribbon or some brooch to their usual apparel. Twice during this time did Madame Bauche go up to Marie’s room with offers to assist her. “Not yet, maman; not quite yet,” said Marie piteously through her tears, and then twice did the green spectacles leave the room, covering eyes which also were not dry. Ah! what had she done? What had she dared to take upon herself to do? She could not undo it now.

And then it became quite dark in the passages and out of doors, and the guests assembled in the salon. La Mère came in and out three or four times, uneasy in her gait and unpleasant in her aspect, and everybody began to see that things were wrong. “She is ill, I am afraid,” said one. “The excitement has been too much,” said a second; “and he is so old,” whispered a third. And the Capitaine stalked about erect on his wooden leg, taking snuff, and striving to look indifferent; but he also was uneasy in his mind.

Presently La Mère came in again, with a quicker step than before, and whispered something, first to Adolphe and then to the Capitaine, whereupon they both followed her out of the room.

“Not in her chamber,” said Adolphe.

“Then she must be in yours,” said the Capitaine.

“She is in neither,” said La Mère Bauche, with her sternest voice; “nor is she in the house!”

And now there was no longer an affectation of indifference on the part of any of them. They were anything but indifferent. The Capitaine was eager in his demands that the matter should still be kept secret from the guests. She had always been romantic, he said, and had now gone out to walk by the riverside. They three and the old bathman would go out and look for her.

“But it is pitch dark,” said La Mère Bauche.