ng, and desires that
you will have a little patience. Come in. Take chairs. You will not come
in? No? Nor you, Monsieur? No? I will set some chairs outside, eh? No?"

They moved by twos and threes away, and Raoul, retiring, gave his
employer such momentary aid as was required. When Joseph, in changed
dress, once more appeared, only a child or two lingered to see him, and
he had nothing to do but sit down and, as far as he felt at liberty to
do so, answer his assistant's questions.

During the recital, Raoul was obliged to exercise the severest
self-restraint to avoid laughing,--a feeling which was modified by the
desire to assure his employer that he understood this sort of thing
perfectly, had run the same risks himself, and thought no less of a man,
_providing he was a gentleman_, because of an unlucky retributive knock
on the head. But he feared laughter would overclimb speech; and, indeed,
with all expression of sympathy stifled, he did not succeed so
completely in hiding the conflicting emotion but that Joseph did once
turn his pale, grave face surprisedly, hearing a snuffling sound,
suddenly stifled in a drawer of corks. Said Raoul, with an unsteady
utterance, as he slammed the drawer:

"H-h-dat makes me dat I can't 'elp to laugh w'en I t'ink of dat fool
yesse'dy w'at want to buy my pigshoe for honly one 'undred dolla'--ha,
ha ha, ha!"

He laughed almost indecorously.

"Raoul," said Frowenfeld, rising and closing his eyes, "I am going back
for my hat. It would make matters worse for that person to send it to
me, and it would be something like a vindication for me to go back to
the house and get it."

Mr. Innerarity was about to make strenuous objection, when there came in
one whom he recognized as an attache of his cousin Honore's
counting-room, and handed the apothecary a note. It contained Honore's
request that if Frowenfeld was in his shop he would have the goodness to
wait there until the writer could call and see him.

"I will wait," was the reply.

CHAPTER XXXV

"FO' WAD YOU CRYNE?"

Clotilde, a step or two from home, dismissed her attendant, and as
Aurora, with anxious haste, opened to her familiar knock, appeared
before her pale and trembling.

"_Ah, ma fille_--"

The overwrought girl dropped her head and wept without restraint upon
her mother's neck. She let herself be guided to a chair, and there,
while Aurora nestled close to her side, yielded a few moments to reverie
before she