iscovered in three or four days who all the guests
were and where they came from.

Mlle. Cadet also told him that Carminatti had sent an ardent declaration
of love to the Sandoval girl the first day he saw her.

"The devil!" exclaimed Caesar. "What an inflammable Neapolitan it is!
And what did she reply?"

"What would she reply? Nothing."

"As you are already familiar with everything going on here," said
Caesar, "I am going to ask you a question: what is the noise in the
court every night? I am always thinking of asking somebody."

"Why, it is charging the accumulator of the lift," replied Mlle. Cadet.

"You have relieved me from a terrible doubt which worried me."

"I have never heard a noise," said Mlle. de Sandoval, breaking into the
conversation.

"That's because your room is on the square," Caesar answered, "and the
noise is in the court; on the poor side of the house."

"Pshaw! There is no reason to complain," remarked Mlle. Cadet, "if they
give us a serenade."

"Do you consider yourself poor?" Mlle. de Sandoval asked Caesar,
disdainfully.

"Yes, I consider myself poor, because I am."

During the following days Mme. Dawson and her daughters were introduced
to the rest of the people in the hotel, and became intimate with them.
The "Contessina" Brenda and the San Martino girls made friends with the
French girls, and the Neapolitan and his gentlemen friends flitted among
them all.

The Countess Brenda at first behaved somewhat stiff with Mme. Dawson and
her daughters, but later she little by little submitted and permitted
them to be her friends.

She introduced the French ladies to the other ladies in the hotel; but
doubtless her aristocratic ideas would not allow her to consider Mlle.
Cadet a person worthy to be introduced, for whenever she got to her she
acted as if she didn't know her.

The governess, noticing this repeated contempt, would blush at it, and
once she murmured, addressing Caesar with tears ready to escape from her
eyes:

"That's a nice thing to do! Just because I am poor, I don't think they
ought to despise me."

"Don't pay any attention," said Caesar, quite aloud; "these middle-class
people are often very rude."

Mlle. de Sandoval gave Caesar a look half startled and half reproving;
and he explained, smiling:

"I was telling Mlle. Cadet a funny story."

Mme. Dawson and her daughters soon became friends with the most
distinguished persons in the hotel; only the Marchesa Sci