jealousy!

The very suspicion staggered her.

Again she sank upon her little white bed, gripping the coverlet in her
nervous fingers and burying her face in the pillow.

She examined her own heart, analysing her feelings as only a woman can
analyse them.

Yes. She loved Ralph Ansell--loved him sincerely and well. Eighteen
months ago he had casually entered the little restaurant one evening and
ordered some supper from Pierre, the shabby, bald-headed waiter, who had
been for so many years in her father's service. At that moment Jean--who
was employed in the daytime at the Maison Collette, the well-known
milliners in Conduit Street--happened to be in the cash-desk of her
father's little establishment where one-and-sixpenny four-course
luncheons and two-shilling six-course dinners were served.

From behind the brass grille she had gazed out upon the lonely,
good-looking, well-dressed young fellow whom she saw was very nervous
and agitated. Their eyes met, when he had instantly become calm, and had
smiled at her.

He came the next night and the next, with eyes only for her, until he
summed up courage to speak to her, with the result that they had become
acquainted.

A young man of French birth, though his father had been an American
domiciled in Paris, he was possessed of independent means, and lived in
a cosy little bachelor flat half-way up Shaftesbury Avenue on the
right-hand side. Far more French than English, in spite of his English
name, he quickly introduced himself into the good graces of Jean's
father--the short, dapper old _restaurateur_, Louis Libert, a Provencal
from the remote little town of Aix, a Frenchman whom many years'
residence in London had failed to anglicise.

For nearly twenty years old Louis Libert had kept the Restaurant
Provence, in Oxford Street, yet Mme. Libert, on account of the English
climate, had preferred to live with her mother in Paris, and for fully
half the period had had her daughter Jean with her. In consequence,
Jean, though she spoke English well, was, nevertheless, a true
Parisienne.

Since her mother's death, four years previously, she had lived in
London, and was at present engaged as modiste at the Maison Collette,
where many of the "creations" of that world-famous house were due to her
own artistic taste and originality.

At first, her father had looked askance at the well-dressed young
stranger who so constantly had dinner or supper at the restaurant, but
ere lon