waited, as if for the footfall of fate, for the hour when Louis Bourcet would arrive. He came at eight, punctual to the minute. Punctuality, like every other virtue, was his. Madame Bourcet whispered something to him, and Louis, for the first time, touched Fifi's hand and brushed it with his lips, Fifi standing like a statue. The crisis was rapidly becoming acute.
At nine o'clock, the cribbage board was brought out; Madame Bourcet dutifully fell asleep, and Louis, with the air of doing the most important thing in the world, took from his pocket a small picture of himself, which he presented to Fifi with a formal speech, of which she afterward could not recall one word. Nor could she remember what he talked about during the succeeding half-hour before Madame Bourcet waked up. Then Louis rose to go, and something was said about happiness and economy in the management of affairs; and Louis announced that owing to the necessity of procuring certain papers from Strasburg, where his little property lay, the marriage contract could not be signed for a month yet, and inquired if Fifi would be ready to marry him at the end of the month. Fifi instantly replied yes, and then the
