ut of her bracelet one
night Beecher gave six hundred francs next morning."

"Then it was the money was false," broke in the other; "Beecher is
ruined, he hasn't sixpence,--at least I've always heard him mentioned as
a fellow regularly cleaned out years ago."

"He was before my day," resumed the first; "but I heard the same story
you did. But what's the meaning of calling a fellow ruined that can go
about the world stopping at first-rate hotels, having carriages, horses,
opera-boxes? Why, the waiter at Aix told me that he paid above five
hundred florins for flowers. This girl, whoever she was, was wild about
moss-roses and pink hyacinths, and they fetched them from Rotterdam for
her. Pretty well that for a ruined man!"

"Perhaps it was she herself had the money," suggested the other, half
carelessly.

"That's possible, too; I know that whenever she came down to the wells
and took a glass of the waters, she always gave a gold piece to the girl
that served her."

"Then she was not a lady by birth; that trait is quite sufficient to
decide the point."

Davis started as if he had been stung; here, from the lips of these raw
youths, was he to receive a lesson in life, and be told that all the
cost and splendor by which he purposed to smooth over the difficult
approaches to society were fatal blunders and no more,--that the
very extravagance so imposing in one of acknowledged station becomes
"suspect" in those of dubious rank. Like all men of quick resentments,
he soon turned the blame from himself to others. It was Lizzy's fault.
What right had she to draw upon herself all the censorious tongues of
a watering-place? Why should she have attracted this foolish notoriety?
After all, she was new to life and the world, and might be pardoned;
but Beecher,--it was just the one solitary thing he _did_ know,--Beecher
ought to have warned her against this peril; he ought to have guarded
against it himself. Why should such a girl be exposed to the insolent
comments of fellows like these? and he measured them deliberately, and
thought over in his mind how little trouble it would cost him to put two
families into mourning,--mayhap, to throw a life-long misery into
some happy home, and change the whole destinies of many he had never
seen,--never should see! There was, however, this difficulty, that in
doing so he drew a greater publicity upon her,--all whose interests
required secrecy and caution. "'Till she have the right to anothe