“Do you mean that M. Groener does not approve of me?” pursued Kittredge.

“M.  Groener knows nothing about you,” answered Mother Bonneton, “except that you have been hanging around this foolish girl.  But he understands his responsibility as the only relation she has in the world and he knows she will respect his wishes as the one who has paid her board, more or less, for five years.”

“Well?”

“Well, the last time M. Groener was here, that’s about a month ago, he asked me and my husband to make inquiries about you, and see what we could find out.”

“It’s abominable!” exclaimed Alice.

“Abominable?  Why is it abominable?  Your cousin wants to know if this young man is a proper person for you to have as a friend.”

“I can decide that for myself,” flashed the girl.

“Oh, can you?  Ha, ha!  How wise we are!”

“And—­er—­you have made inquiries about me?” resumed Kittredge with a strangely anxious look.

Mother Bonneton half closed her eyes and threw out her thick lips in an ugly leer.  “I should say we have!  And found out things—­well, just a few!”

“What things?”

“We have found out, my pretty sir, that you lived for months last year by gambling.  I suppose you will deny it?”

“No,” answered Kittredge in a low tone, “it’s true.”

“Ah!  We found out also that the money you made by gambling you spent with a brazen creature who——­”

“Stop!” interrupted the American, and turning to the girl he said:  “Alice, I didn’t mean to go into these details, I didn’t see the need of it, but——­”

“I don’t want to know the details,” she interrupted.  “I know you, Lloyd, that is enough.”

She looked him in the eyes trustingly and he blinked a little.

“Plucky!” he murmured.  “They’re trying to queer me and maybe they will, but I’m not going to lie about it.  Listen.  I came to Paris a year ago on account of a certain person.  I thought I loved her and—­I made a fool of myself.  I gave up a good position in New York and—­after I had been here a while I went broke.  So I gambled.  It’s pretty bad—­I don’t defend myself, only there’s one thing I want you to know.  This person was not a low woman, she was a lady.”

“Huh!” grunted Mother Bonneton.  “A lady!  The kind of a lady who dines alone with gay young gentlemen in private rooms!  Aha, we have the facts!”

The young man’s eyes kindled.  “No matter where she dined, I say she was a lady, and the proof of it is I—­I wanted her to get a divorce and—­and marry me.”

“Oh!” winced Alice.

“You see what he is,” triumphed the sacristan’s wife, “running after a married woman.”

But Kittredge went on doggedly:  “You’ve got to hear the rest now.  One day something happened that—­that made me realize what an idiot I had been.  When I say this person was a lady I’m not denying that she raised the devil with me.  She did that good and plenty, so at last I decided to break away and I did.  It wasn’t exactly a path of roses for me those weeks, but I stuck to it, because—­because I had some one to help me,” he paused and looked tenderly at Alice, “and—­well, I cut the whole thing out, gambling and all.  That was six months ago.”