Man and Maid

"When you have made your fortune, Suzette, what will you do with it?"

"I shall buy that farm for my mother--I shall put Georgine into a

convent for the nobility, and arrange a large dot for her--and for

me?--I shall gamble in a controlled way at Monte Carlo--."

"You won't marry then, Suzette?"

"Marry!" she laughed a shrill laugh--"For why, Nicholas?--A tie-up to

one man, hein?--to what good?--and yet who can say--to be an honored

wife is the one experience I do not know yet!"--she laughed again--.

"And who is Georgine--you have not spoken of her before, Suzette?"

She reddened a little under her new terra cotta rouge.

"No?--Oh! Georgine is my little first mistake--but I have her

beautifully brought up, Nicholas--with the Holy Mother at St. Brieux. I

am then her Aunt--so to speak--the wife of a small shop keeper in

Paris, you must know--She adores me--and I give all I can to St.

Georges-des-Près--. Georgine will be a lady and marry the Mayor's

son--one day--."

Something touched me infinitely. This queer little demi-mondaine

mother--her thoughts set on her child's purity, and the conventional

marriage for her--in the future. Her plebeian, insolent little round

face so kindly in repose.

I respect Suzette far more than my friends of the world--.

When she left--it was perhaps in bad taste, but I gave her a quite heavy

four figure cheque.

"For the education of Georgine--Suzette."

She flung her arms round my neck and kissed me frankly on both cheeks,

and tears were brimming over in her merry black eyes.

"Thou hast after all a heart, and art after all a gentleman,

Nicholas--Va!--"--and she ran from the room.