“On the contrary,” said Aurora, with an air of generous protestation, “it is I who should apologize; I fear I injured your horse.”

M. Grandissime only smiled, and opening the rent-notice dropped his glance upon it while he said in a preoccupied tone: 

“My horse is very well, I thank you.”

But as he read the paper, his face assumed a serious air and he seemed to take an unnecessary length of time to reach the bottom of it.

“He is trying to think how he will get rid of me,” thought Aurora; “he is making up some pretext with which to dismiss me, and when the tenth of March comes we shall be put into the street.”

M. Grandissime extended the letter toward her, but she did not lift her hands.

“I beg to assure you, madame, I could never have permitted this notice to reach you from my office; I am not the Honore Grandissime for whom this is signed.”

Aurora smiled in a way to signify clearly that that was just the subterfuge she had been anticipating.  Had she been at home she would have thrown herself, face downward, upon the bed; but she only smiled meditatively upward at the picture of an East Indian harbor and made an unnecessary rearrangement of her handkerchief under her folded hands.

“There are, you know,”—­began Honore, with a smile which changed the meaning to “You know very well there are”—­“two Honore Grandissimes.  This one who sent you this letter is a man of color—­”

“Oh!” exclaimed Aurora, with a sudden malicious sparkle.

“If you will entrust this paper to me,” said Honore, quietly, “I will see him and do now engage that you shall have no further trouble about it.  Of course, I do not mean that I will pay it, myself; I dare not offer to take such a liberty.”

Then he felt that a warm impulse had carried him a step too far.

Aurora rose up with a refusal as firm as it was silent.  She neither smiled nor scintillated now, but wore an expression of amiable practicality as she presently said, receiving back the rent-notice as she spoke: 

“I thank you, sir, but it might seem strange to him to find his notice in the hands of a person who can claim no interest in the matter.  I shall have to attend to it myself.”

“Ah! little enchantress,” thought her grave-faced listener, as he gave attention, “this, after all—­ball and all—­is the mood in which you look your very, very best”—­a fact which nobody knew better than the enchantress herself.

He walked beside her toward the open door leading back into the counting-room, and the dozen or more clerks, who, each by some ingenuity of his own, managed to secure a glimpse of them, could not fail to feel that they had never before seen quite so fair a couple.  But she dropped her veil, bowed M. Grandissime a polite “No farther,” and passed out.

M. Grandissime walked once up and down his private office, gave the door a soft push with his foot and lighted a cigar.