It was a full hour before Richling rejoined his wife. Mrs. Riley had stepped off to some neighbor's door with Mike on her arm. Mary was on the sidewalk. "John," she said, in a low voice, and with a long anxious look. "What?" "He _didn't_ take the only dollar of your own in the world?" "Mary, what could I do? It seemed a crime to give, and a crime not to give. He cried like a child; said it was all a sham about his dinner and his _robe de chambre_. An aunt, two little cousins, an aged uncle at home--and not a cent in the house! What could I do? He says he'll return it in three days." "And"--Mary laughed distressfully--"you believed him?" She looked at him with an air of tender, painful admiration, half way between a laugh and a cry. "Come, sit down," he said, sinking upon the little wooden buttress at one side of the door-step. Tears sprang into her eyes. She shook her head. "Let's go inside." And in there she told him sincerely, "No, no, no; she didn't think he had done wrong"--when he knew he had. CHAPTER XXIII. WEAR AND TEAR. The arrangement for Dr. Sevier to place the loan of fifty dollars on his own books at Richling's credit naturally brought Narcisse into relation with it. It was a case of love at first sight. From the moment the record of Richling's "little quantity" slid from the pen to the page, Narcisse had felt himself betrothed to it by destiny, and hourly supplicated the awful fates to frown not upon the amorous hopes of him unaugmented. Richling descended upon him once or twice and tore away from his embrace small fractions of the coveted treasure, choosing, through a diffidence which he mistook for a sort of virtue, the time of day when he would not see Dr. Sevier; and at the third visitation took the entire golden fleece away with him rather than encounter again the always more or less successful courtship of the scorner of loans. A faithful suitor, however, was not thus easily shaken off. Narcisse became a frequent visitor at the Richlings', where he never mentioned money; that part was left to moments of accidental meeting with Richling in the street, which suddenly began to occur at singularly short intervals. Mary labored honestly and arduously to dislike him--to hold a repellent attitude toward him. But he was too much for her. It was easy enough when he was absent; but one look at his handsome face, so rife with animal innocence, and despite herself she was ready to reward his displays of sentiment and erudition with laughter that, mean what it might, always pleased and flattered him. "Can you help liking him?" she would ask John. "I can't, to save my life!" Had the treasure been earnings, Richling said--and believed--he could firmly have repelled Narcisse's importunities. But coldly to withhold an occasional modest heave-offering of that which was the free bounty of another to him was more than he could do.