wanted to see it. Of course I told him it was a wretched garret, unfit
for people like him; but he insisted, and _I_ took him up."

"To the room in which Miss Henrietta is now staying?"

"Exactly. I thought he would be disgusted; but no. He looked out of the
window, tried the door if it would shut, examined the partition-wall,
and at last he said, 'This suits me; I take the room.' And thereupon he
hands me a twenty-franc piece to make it a bargain. I was amazed."

If M. Ravinet felt any interest in the story, he took pains not to show
it; for his eyes wandered to and fro as if his thoughts were elsewhere,
and he was heartily tired of the tedious account.

"And who is that fashionable young man?" he asked.

"Ah! that is more than I know, except that his name is Maxime."

That name made the old merchant jump as if a shower-bath had suddenly
fallen upon his head. He changed color; and his small yellowish eyes had
a strange look in them.

But he recovered promptly, so promptly, that his visitor saw nothing;
and then he said in a tone of indifference,--

"The young man did not give you his family name?"

"No."

"But ought you not to have inquired?"