gentleness of Suzette was manifest.

Ralph thought to himself that she must be good. It was the face of a
sweet sister or a bright daughter, or one of those school-children with
whom he had played long ago. And withal she was very neat. If any
commandment was issued especially to the French, it enjoined tidiness;
but this child was so quietly attired that her cleanliness seemed a
matter of nature, not of command. Her cheap coral ear-drops and the thin
band of gold upon her white finger could not have been so fitting had
they been of diamonds; and her tresses, inclosed in a fillet of beads,
were tied in a breadth of blue ribbon which made a cunning lover's-knot
above. A plain collar and wristbands, a bright cotton dress and dark
apron, and a delicate slipper below--these were the components of a
picture which Ralph thought the loveliest and pleasantest and best that
he had ever known.

In his own sober city of the Middle States he would have been ashamed to
connect with these innocent features a doubt, a light thought, a desire.
Yet here in France, where climate, or custom, or man had changed the
relations though not the nature of woman, he did but as the world, in
blending with Suzette's tranquil face a series of ideas which he dared
not associate with what he had called pure, beautiful, or happy.

Now and then they spoke together, unintelligibly of course, but very
merrily, and Ralph's appetite was that of the great carnivora; potage,
beef, mutton, pullet, vanished like waifs, and then came the salad,
which he could not make, so that Suzette helped him again with her
sprightly white fingers, contriving so marvellous a dish that Ralph
thought her a little magician, and wanted to eat salad till daybreak.

"Now for the cards!" cried Terrapin, when they had finished the _cafe_
and the _eau-de-vie_; and as the parties ranged themselves about the
greater table, Terrapin, who knew everybody, gave their names and
avocations.

"That is Boetia, a journalist on the _Siecle_; you will observe that he
smokes his cigars quite down to the stump. The little man beside him,
with a blouse, is Haynau, fellow of the College of Beaux
Arts--dead-broke, as usual; and his friend, the sallow chap, is Moise,
whose father died last week, leaving him ten thousand francs. Moise, you
will see, has a wife, Feefine, though I suspect him of bigamy; and the
tall girl, with hair like midnight and a hard voice, is at present
unmarried. Those four f