noise,
Toto's friends shook hands with their host and adroitly mixed with the
crowd.

"Good fellows! jolly fellows;" muttered Toto, striving to catch a last
glimpse of them.

Tantaine gave a low, derisive whistle. "My lad," said he, "you keep
execrable company, and one day you will repent it."

"I can look after myself, sir."

"Do as you like, my lad; it is no business of mine. But, take my word
for it, you will come to grief some day. I have told you that often
enough."

"If the old rascal suspected anything," thought Toto, "he would not talk
in this way."

Wretched Toto! he did not know that when his spirits were rising
the danger was terribly near, for Tantaine was just then saying to
himself,--

"Ah! this lad is much too clever--too clever by half. If I were going
on with the business, and could make it worth his while, how useful he
would be to me! but just now it would be most imprudent to allow him to
wander about and jabber when he gets drunk."

Meanwhile Toto had called a waiter, and, flinging a ten-franc piece on
the table, said haughtily: "Take your bill out of that." But Tantaine
pushed the money back toward the lad, and, drawing another ten-franc
piece from his pocket, gave it to the waiter.

This unexpected act of generosity put the lad in the best possible
humor. "All the better for me," exclaimed he; "and now let us hunt up
Caroline Schimmel."

"Is she here? I could not find her."

"Because you did not know where to look for her. She is at cards in the
coffee-room. Come along, sir."

But Tantaine laid his hand upon the boy's arm.

"One moment," said he. "Did you tell the woman just what I ordered you
to say?"

"I did not omit a single word."

"Tell me what you said, then."

"For five days," began the lad solemnly, "your Toto has been your
Caroline's shadow. We have played cards until all sorts of hours, and
I took care that she should always win. I confided to her that I had a
jolly old uncle,--a man not without means, a widower, and crazy to be
married again,--who had seen her and had fallen in love with her."

"Good! my lad, good! and what did she say?"

"Why, she grinned like half a dozen cats; only she is a bit artful, and
I saw at once that she thought I was after her cards, but the mention of
my uncle's property soon chucked her off that idea."

"Did you give my name?"

"Yes, at the end, I did. I knew that she had seen you, and so I kept it
back as long as I could; but