heartening to sit by the pond and watch the wavering sheet of beaten
gold water, reflecting all shades of green in a restless shimmer
against the shadowed grass around. Madame Valière always had a bit
of dry bread to feed the pigeons withal--it gave a cheerful sense of
superfluity, and her manner of sprinkling the crumbs revived Madame
Dépine's faded images of a Princess scattering New Year largess.

But beneath all these pretences of content lay a hollow sense of
desolation. It was not the want of butter nor the diminished meat; it
was the total removal from life of that intangible splendour of hope
produced by the lottery ticket. Ah! every day was drawn blank now.
This gloom, this gnawing emptiness at the heart, was worse than either
had foreseen or now confessed. Malicious Fate, too, they felt, would
even crown with the _grand prix_ the number they would have chosen.
But for the prospective draw for the Wig--which reintroduced the
aleatory--life would scarcely have been bearable.

Madame Dépine's sister-in-law's visit by the June excursion train was
a not unexpected catastrophe. It only lasted a day, but it put back
the Grey Wig by a week, for Madame Choucrou had to be fed at Duval's,
and Madame Valière magnanimously insisted on being of the party:
whether to run parallel with her friend, or to carry off the
brown wig, she alone knew. Fortunately, Madame Choucrou was both
short-sighted and colour-blind. On the other hand, she liked a _petit
verre_ with her coffee, and both at a separate restaurant. But never
had Madame Valière appeared to Madame Dépine's eyes more like the
"Princess," more gay and polished and debonair, than at this little
round table on the sunlit Boulevard. Little trills of laughter came
from the half-toothless gums; long gloved fingers toyed with the
liqueur glass or drew out the old-fashioned watch to see that Madame