three walked out together in the warm summer evenings; and occasionally Madame Martineau had seats, from a mysterious source, for the Français or the Odéon, which she gave to the girls, or took them with her. They had also tickets offered them once or twice by Messieurs Morin and Doucet; but as these were for theatres where plays were being enacted which, Madame Martineau declared, were not convenable for young unmarried ladies, they were refused. Elizabeth dearly loved a play. She would willingly have paid for herself and her companions once or twice a week; but, in the first place, she knew they would not accept places on these terms; and secondly, such extravagance would vitiate the impression of herself which she had taken pains to produce, as of a young person possessing only a moderate independence. Her sitting-room, it is true, favoured the idea of recklessness—that she could not help; on every other point she flattered herself she was economical, to the verge of parsimony.
After the first week of Elizabeth's entering the pension, its inmates, with one or two exceptions, agreed that, considering she was English, she was much less stiff, much pleasanter, than might have been expected—as appearance, indeed, at first had led them to fear. They had grown more guarded in their language, less risqués in their jokes, and she rewarded them by unbending from her attitude of dignified reserve.
To those who had known her but a short time since, a great change, it is true, would have been apparent—a change corresponding with that we see sometimes, very suddenly, in the human face. The experience of the
