I was enchanted. I had not permitted myself to feel the full weight of the burden Clementine was heaping upon my shoulders until now it seemed on the point of slipping from them, and never were congratulations more sincere than mine. As she spared me none of her confidence, every detail of her courtship and her prospects was soon at my disposal. In the course of her regular round of the kitchen doors of the _Quartier_ she had picked up an Englishman who washed dishes in a restaurant. He was not much over twenty, he earned no less than eighteen shillings a week, and he had asked her to marry him. She accepted him, as she had accepted the Italian, because he would pay the rent; the only difference was that her new admirer proposed the form of companionship which is not lightly broken. "_Cette fois je crois que cela sera vrai--que l'affaire ne tombera pas dans l'eau_," she said, remembering the deep waters which, in her recent affair, had gone over her head. "_Mon petit Anglais_"--her name for him--figured in her account as a model of propriety. He had a strict regard for morals. He objected to her working _chez les femmes_, and expressed his desire that she should remain in our service, despite the loss to their income. He condoned her previous indiscretions, and was prepared to play a father's part to her little Ernest. Altogether the situation was fast growing idyllic, and with Clementine in her new role of _fiancee_, we thought that peace for us all was in sight. She set about her preparations at once, and did not hesitate to let me know that an agreeable wedding present would be house linen, however old and ragged, and a new hat for the wedding. I had looked for some preliminary begging as a matter of course, and I was already going through my linen closet to see what I could spare, when I caught Clementine collecting wedding presents from me for which I had not been asked.