reached the age of forty, and her prospects were of the dreariest, when Prince Charming made a belated appearance in the form of an elderly government official of Madagascar who had come to Paris to take a vacation and see the Great Exposition. He had plenty of funds, a boyish heart, and a quite Madagascan intensity. Madame, who had never been able to resist prose, was not likely to resist the first breath of poetry to be infused into her troubled life, and she was only too happy to allow herself to be feted, to be taken to restaurants and theatres, not to mention the exposition and the new Eiffel Tower. They went on excursions to Ostend and Strasbourg, and ended by becoming engaged. Madame was in raptures. The fiancé was to return home and prepare a mansion, and she was to follow in two months—by freight, as Grover put it to himself.
But Paris, Madame, the Eiffel Tower, and especially the return sea voyage proved too much for the brave old gentleman, and he died incontinently upon his arrival at Mozambique. Madame was in the midst of settling her affairs and assembling a trousseau when she received the news. In desolation she retired with the remainder of her fortunes and furniture to the rue Truffaut,—that, reflected Grover, is when the big clock stopped forever,—and hung the translucent portrait of her dead gallant in the front window. He was a standard by whom Madame measured all humanity, chiefly her men of affairs, to their great disadvantage.
