ng to the family order, but its grade
was much higher than that of the hotel in which they had lived in San
Francisco. As in the former place, they had private apartments, a private
table, and the service of their own colored men, in addition to that of
the hotel servants. But their salon was large and beautifully furnished,
their meals were cooked by a French chef, every one, from the lordly
porter to the quick-footed chambermaid, served them with a courteous
interest, and Mrs. Cliff said that although their life in the two hotels
seemed to be in the main the same sort of life, they were, in reality, as
different as an old, dingy mahogany bureau, just dragged from an attic,
and that same piece of furniture when it had been rubbed down, oiled, and
varnished. And Ralph declared that, so far as he knew anything about it,
there was nothing like the air of Paris to bring out the tones and
colorings and veinings of hotel life. But the greatest difference between
the former and the present condition of this little party lay in the fact
that in San Francisco its principal member was Mrs. Philip Horn, while in
Paris it was Miss Edna Markham.

This change of name had been the result of nights of thought and hours of
consultation. In San Francisco Edna felt herself to be Mrs. Horn as truly
as if they had been married at high noon in one of the city churches, but
although she could see no reason to change her faith in the reality of
her conjugal status, she had begun to fear that Captain Horn might have
different views upon the subject. This feeling had been brought about by
the tone of his letters. If he should die, those letters might prove that
she was then his widow, but it was plain that he did not wish to impress
upon her mind that she was now his wife.

If she had remained in San Francisco, Edna would have retained the
captain's name. There she was a stranger, and Captain Horn was well
known. His agents knew her as Mrs. Horn, the people of the _Mary
Bartlett_ knew her as such, and she should not have thought of resigning
it. But in Paris the case was very different. There she had friends, and
expected to make more, and in that city she was quite sure that Captain
Horn was very little known.

Edna's Parisian friends, were all Americans, and some of them people of
consideration, one of her old schoolmates being the wife of a secretary
of the American legation. Could she appear before these friends as Mrs.
Captain Philip Hor