THAT COSTLY RIDE

The household lived frugally on the meager income derived from the
husband's insignificant appointments. Two children had been born of the
marriage, and the earlier condition of the strictest economy had become
one of quiet, concealed, shamefaced misery, the poverty of a noble
family--which in spite of misfortune never forgets its rank.

Hector de Gribelin had been educated in the provinces, under the paternal
roof, by an aged priest. His people were not rich, but they managed to
live and to keep up appearances.

At twenty years of age they tried to find him a position, and he entered
the Ministry of Marine as a clerk at sixty pounds a year. He foundered on
the rock of life like all those who have not been early prepared for its
rude struggles, who look at life through a mist, who do not know how to
protect themselves, whose special aptitudes and faculties have not been
developed from childhood, whose early training has not developed the
rough energy needed for the battle of life or furnished them with tool or
weapon.

His first three years of office work were a martyrdom.

He had, however, renewed the acquaintance of a few friends of his family
--elderly people, far behind the times, and poor like himself, who
lived in aristocratic streets, the gloomy thoroughfares of the Faubourg