Mademoiselle blushes, but is too well-bred to say no. Monsieur comes, dressed to death, spruce as if he stepped out of a bandbox, and mademoiselle is prepared to receive him, nearest of kin being always present. Mademoiselle has got her instructions; they were somewhat in the key of the admonition little boys make to the bears in the Jardin des Plantes: _fais le beau_, 'do the handsome.' Monsieur pays compliments to mademoiselle, always through the nearest of kin, and she, dear, well-bred creature, listens to monsieur with sweetest politeness, never betraying a vulgar desire to look into the face, much less into the heart, of the man who is to be her future guide through life, her partner in the tomb. Thus the comedy proceeds. Nearest of kin does the courting, which is not too painfully elongated. The _trousseau_ is bought and exhibited. Monsieur buys the _corbeille_, which is ordinarily expected to amount in value to one-tenth of the dowry he gets with his wife (which dowry particular care is taken to settle on the wife herself). The banns are published; one day a party appears before the Mairie, and a commercial--we beg pardon, a marriage contract is signed, a supererogatory gallop to a neighbouring church takes place to satisfy conventionalism, and Mdlle. F---- becomes Madame A----. There is no love before marriage in nine cases out of ten; of the love which grows up after marriage we are too delicate to speak. It is understood--only sometimes it will happen that monsieur has a club and madame a _cavalier eservente_. And madame, dear, well-bred creature, endeavours to make up for the reserve imposed on mademoiselle, and it is perfectly astonishing to discover what a profound knowledge of the world and its schemes and slanders the shy young maiden of last week contrives to develop all at once in her married household. The reader will have remarked that O'Hara received the announcement that his Irish friend had succeeded in his proposal without surprise. The sole reason was that O'Hara had been living sufficiently long in France to know that marriages are arranged with the same celerity that one would toss a pancake, and that if the financial requirements are satisfied it is easy to fulfil the exigencies of affection. During the interval that preceded the interesting ceremony (to borrow a phrase from the newspapers), which was not to take place until after Easter, the O'Hoolohan Roe was a constant visitor at the Rue de la Vieille Estrapade, only now he called himself the O'Hoolohan Dhuv, his sly countryman having bantered him on the affix Roe, which applies only to a light-complexioned, red-haired man, while he was tawny of complexion and black-haired as a Spaniard of the south. A most unmerciful bantering he did give him anent his assumption of the _The_.