hen, in the vain thought that she might have one word from him,
though it were a curse. He took his new friends into an alcove. She saw
the wine burst from the bottle, and heard the clink of the glasses as
they drank good health. She did not know that all his laughter was
feigned, that his happiness was delirium, that his vows were lies. She
did not believe Ralph Flare so base as to put his foot upon her, whom he
had already stricken down.

And he--he was all self, all stone!--he laid no offence at his own door.
He did not ask if her infidelity was real or if it had no warrant in his
own slight and goading. The poor, pale face went after him
reproachfully. Every painful footfall that she made was the patter of a
blood-drop. Such unnatural excitement must have some termination. He
quarrelled with a waiter. Old Bullier ordered a cuirassier to take him
to the door; he would have resisted, but Terrapin whispered: "Don't be
foolish, Flare; if you are put out it will be a triumph for the girl;"
and only this conviction kept him calm. The cyprians whom he wooed
followed him out; he turned upon them bitterly when he had crossed the
threshold, and leaping into a carriage was driven to his hotel, where
he slept unquietly till daybreak.

See him, at dawn, in deep slumber! his face is sallow, his lips are dry,
his chest heaves nervously as he breathes hard. It is a bad sleep; it is
the sleep of bad children, to whom the fiend comes, knowing that the
older they grow the more surely are they his own.

This is not, surely, the bashful young man who started at the phantom of
his mother, and sinned reluctantly. Aye! but those who do wrong after
much admonishment are wickeder than those who obey the first bad
impulse. He is ten times more cast away who thinks and sins than he who
only sins and does not think.

Ralph Flare was one of your reasoning villains. His conscience was not a
better nature rising up in the man, and saying "this is wrong." It was
not conscience at all; it was only a fear. Far down as Suzette might be,
she never could have been unfeeling, unmerciful as he. It is a bad
character to set in black and white, yet you might ask old Terrapin or
any shrewd observer what manner of man was Ralph, and they would say,
"So-so-ish, a little sentimental, spooney likewise; but a good fellow, a
good fellow!" And more curious than all, Suzette said so too.

He rose at daylight, and dressed and looked at himself in the glass. He
f