her at all. I assured her that her views perfectly met my own and that on the morrow I should have the pleasure of putting three months rent into her hand. She received this announcement with serenity and with no apparent sense that after all it would be becoming of her to say that I ought to see the rooms first. This did not occur to her and indeed her serenity was mainly what I wanted. Our little bargain was just concluded when the door opened and the younger lady appeared on the threshold. As soon as Miss Bordereau saw her niece she cried out almost gaily, 'He will give three thousand—three thousand to-morrow!'
Miss Tita stood still, with her patient eyes turning from one of us to the other; then she inquired, scarcely above her breath, 'Do you mean francs?'
'Did you mean francs or dollars?' the old woman asked of me at this.
'I think francs were what you said,' I answered, smiling.
'That is very good,' said Miss Tita, as if she had become conscious that her own question might have looked over-reaching.
'What do you know? You are ignorant,' Miss Bordereau remarked; not with acerbity but with a strange, soft coldness.
'Yes, of money—certainly of money!' Miss Tita hastened to exclaim.
'I am sure you have your own branches of knowledge,' I took the liberty of saying, genially. There was something painful to me, somehow, in the turn the conversation had taken, in the discussion of the rent.
'She had a very good education when she was
