But six months ago a good old uncle had died and left them some money. She would have a little _dot_ now, and they could travel. Maman said she would not have a large enough _dot_ to make a fine marriage in France, but that the English and American men were more romantic. They went first to the Orient, as there were many Englishmen of good family to be met there. "But maman is difficult to please," she added with her enchanting artlessness, "as difficult as I myself, monsieur. I wish to fall in love like the American girls. Maman says it is not necessary, but I am half American, so, why not? There was an English gentleman with a nice title in Hong Kong and maman was quite pleased with him until she discovered that he gambled or did something equally horrid and she bought our tickets for San Francisco right away." Yes, she was enjoying her travels, but she was a little lonesome; in Rouen at least she had her cousins. For the first time in her life she was talking to a young man alone; even on the steamer she was not permitted to speak to any of the nice young men who looked as if they would like her if only maman would relent. "In our ugly old rooms in Rouen maman cherished me like some rare little flower in an old earthen pot," she added quaintly. "Now the pot has tinsel and tissue paper round it, but until to-night I have felt as if I might just as well be an old cabbage." But it had been heaven to dance with a young man who was not a cousin; and to sit out alone with him in the moonlight, Oh, _grace a Dieu_! Traveling she had read modern novels for the first time. There were many in the ship's library, oh, but dozens! and she knew now how American and English girls enjoyed life. Her mother had been ill nearly all the way over. She had given her word not to speak to any one, but maman had been ignorant of the library replete with the novelists of the day, and although she was not untruthful, _enfin_, she saw no reason to ask her too anxious parent for another prohibition and condemn herself to yawn at the sea. Ruyler proposed at the end of a week. She was the only really innocent, unspoiled, unselfconscious girl he had ever met, almost as old-fashioned as his great grandmother must have been. Not that he set forth her virtues to bolster his determination to marry a girl of no family even in her own country; he was madly in love, and life without her was unthinkable; but he tabulated the thousand points to her credit for the benefit of his outraged father.