t he was not very gay."

Newman wondered whom she was talking about, but just then an opening
among his neighbors enabled him to turn away, and he said to himself
that she was probably paying a tribute to British propriety and playing
at tender solicitude about her papa. Was that miserable old man still
treading the path of vice in her train? Was he still giving her the
benefit of his experience of affairs, and had he crossed the sea to
serve as her interpreter? Newman walked some distance farther, and then
began to retrace his steps taking care not to traverse again the orbit
of Mademoiselle Nioche. At last he looked for a chair under the trees,
but he had some difficulty in finding an empty one. He was about to give
up the search when he saw a gentleman rise from the seat he had been
occupying, leaving Newman to take it without looking at his neighbors.
He sat there for some time without heeding them; his attention was lost
in the irritation and bitterness produced by his recent glimpse of Miss
Noemie's iniquitous vitality. But at the end of a quarter of an hour,
dropping his eyes, he perceived a small pug-dog squatted upon the path
near his feet--a diminutive but very perfect specimen of its interesting
species. The pug was sniffing at the fashionable world, as it passed
him, with his little black muzzle, and was kept from extending his
investigation by a large blue ribbon attached to his collar with an
enormous rosette and held in the hand of a person seated next to
Newman. To this person Newman transferred his attention, and immediately
perceived that he was the object of all that of his neighbor, who was
staring up at him from a pair of little fixed white eyes. These eyes
Newman instantly recognized; he had been sitting for the last quarter of
an hour beside M. Nioche. He had vaguely felt that some one was staring
at him. M. Nioche continued to stare; he appeared afraid to move, even
to the extent of evading Newman's glance.

"Dear me," said Newman; "are you here, too?" And he looked at his
neighbor's helplessness more grimly than he knew. M. Nioche had a new
hat and a pair of kid gloves; his clothes, too, seemed to belong to a
more recent antiquity than of yore. Over his arm was suspended a lady's
mantilla--a light and brilliant tissue, fringed with white lace--which
had apparently been committed to his keeping; and the little dog's blue
ribbon was wound tightly round his hand. There was no expression of
recogni