You are informed (by virtue of the privileges of astronomical discovery) that the star lodger’s name was Mr. Brunelli.  His wearing a yellow tie and paying his rent promptly distinguished him from the other lodgers.  His raiment was splendid, his complexion olive, his mustache fierce, his manners a prince’s, his rings and pins as magnificent as those of a traveling dentist.

He had breakfast served in his room, and he ate it in a red dressing gown with green tassels.  He left the house at noon and returned at midnight.  Those were mysterious hours, but there was nothing mysterious about Mrs. Dempsey’s lodgers except the things that were not mysterious.  One of Mr. Kipling’s poems is addressed to “Ye who hold the unwritten clue to all save all unwritten things.”  The same “readers” are invited to tackle the foregoing assertion.

Mr. Brunelli, being impressionable and a Latin, fell to conjugating the verb “amare,” with Katy in the objective case, though not because of antipathy.  She talked it over with her mother.

“Sure, I like him,” said Katy.  “He’s more politeness than twinty candidates for Alderman, and lie makes me feel like a queen whin he walks at me side.  But what is he, I dinno?  I’ve me suspicions.  The marnin’ll coom whin he’ll throt out the picture av his baronial halls and ax to have the week’s rint hung up in the ice chist along wid all the rist of ’em.”

“’Tis thrue,” admitted Mrs. Dempsey, “that he seems to be a sort iv a Dago, and too coolchured in his spache for a rale gentleman.  But ye may be misjudgin’ him.  Ye should niver suspect any wan of bein’ of noble descint that pays cash and pathronizes the laundry rig’lar.”

“He’s the same thricks of spakin’ and blarneyin’ wid his hands,” sighed Katy, “as the Frinch nobleman at Mrs. Toole’s that ran away wid Mr. Toole’s Sunday pants and left the photograph of the Bastile, his grandfather’s chat-taw, as security for tin weeks’ rint.”

Mr. Brunelli continued his calorific wooing.  Katy continued to hesitate.  One day he asked her out to dine and she felt that a denouement was in the air.  While they are on their way, with Katy in her best muslin, you must take as an entr’acte a brief peep at New York’s Bohemia.

’Tonio’s restaurant is in Bohemia.  The very location of it is secret.  If you wish to know where it is ask the first person you meet.  He will tell you in a whisper.  ’Tonio discountenances custom; he keeps his house-front black and forbidding; he gives you a pretty bad dinner; he locks his door at the dining hour; but he knows spaghetti as the boarding-house knows cold veal; and—­he has deposited many dollars in a certain Banco di—­ something with many gold vowels in the name on its windows.

To this restaurant Mr. Brunelli conducted Katy.  The house was dark and the shades were lowered; but Mr. Brunelli touched an electric button by the basement door, and they were admitted.