inferred from the
poor lad's unusual timidity and awkwardness when he was brought into
contact with her. But she paid no attention to his devotion, accepting
himself and all he did for her as, in some sort, her personal property.

He was of no consequence, he did not count; what was he but her comrade
and former playfellow?

Happily for Fred, he took pleasure in the familiarity with which she
treated him--a familiarity which, had he known it, was not flattering. He
was in the seventh heaven for a whole fortnight, during which he was the
recipient of more dried flowers and bows of ribbon than he ever got in
all the rest of his life--the American girls were very fond of giving
keepsakes--but then his star waned. He was no longer the only one. The
grown-up brother of the Wermants came to Treport--Raoul, with his air of
a young man about town--a boulevardier, with his jacket cut in the latest
fashion, with his cockle-shell of a boat, which he managed as well on
salt water as on fresh, sculling with his arms bare, a cigarette in his
mouth, a monocle in his eye, and a pith-helmet, such as is worn in India.
The young ladies used to gather on the sands to watch him as he struck
the water with the broad blade of his scull, near enough for them to see
and to admire his nautical ability. They thought all his jokes amusing,
and they delighted in his way of seizing his partner for a waltz and
bearing her off as if she were a prize, hardly allowing her to touch the
floor.

Fred thought him, with his stock of old jokes, very ill-mannered. He
laughed at his sculling, and had a great mind to strike him after he saw
him waltzing with Jacqueline. But he had to acknowledge the general
appreciation felt for the fellow whom he called vulgar.

Raoul Wermant did not stay long at Treport. He had only come to see his
sisters on his way to Dieppe, where he expected to meet a certain Leah
Skip, an actress from the 'Nouveautes'. If he kept her waiting, however,
for some days, it was because he was loath to leave the handsome Madame
de Villegry, who was living near her friend Madame de Nailles, recruiting
herself after the fatigues of the winter season. Such being the
situation, the young girls of the Blue Band might have tried in vain to
make any impression upon him. But the hatred with which he inspired Fred
found some relief in the composition of fragments of melancholy verse,
which the young midshipman hid under his mattresses. It is not an