‘Well, sir, he is a gentleman--everyone can see that--but a gentleman as has run through his property. I should gather from his ways that he must have had a great deal of property, and that he’s run through most of it. He is not quite so regular in his payments as I could wish--but he does pay,--and he’s very little trouble, for he’s often away for a week at a time, the rent running on all the same, of course.’ ‘That would hardly matter to him if he doesn’t pay it,’ said Chicot. ‘Oh, but he does pay, sir. He’s dilatory, but I get my money. A poor widow like me couldn’t afford to lose by the best of lodgers.’ ‘What is the gentleman’s name?’ ‘Mr. Desrolles.’ ‘That sounds like a foreign name.’ ‘It may, sir, but the gentleman’s English. I haven’t in a general way laid myself out for foreigners,’ said the landlady, with a glance at La Chicot, ‘though this is rather a foreign neighbourhood.’ The lodgings were taken, and Jack Chicot and his wife began a new phase of existence in London. The life lacked much that had made their life in Paris tolerable--the careless gaiety, the brighter skies, the Bohemian pleasures of the French city--and Jack Chicot felt as if a dense black curtain had been drawn across his youth and all its delusions, leaving him outside in a cold, commonplace world, a worn-out, disappointed man, old before his time. He missed the gay, happy-go-lucky comrades who had helped him to forget his troubles. He missed the drives in the leafy wood, the excursions to suburban dining-houses, the riotous suppers after midnight, all the merry dissipations of his Parisian life. London pleasures were dull and heavy. London suppers meant no more than eating and drinking too many oysters and too much wine. Mr. Smolendo’s expectations were fully realised. La Chicot made a hit at the Prince Frederick. Those flaming posters under every railway arch and on every hoarding in London were not in vain. The theatre was crowded nightly, and La Chicot was applauded to the echo. She breathed anew the intoxicating breath of success, and she grew daily more insolent and more reckless, spent more money, drank more champagne, and was more eager for pleasure, flattery, and fine dress. The husband looked on with a gloomy face. They were no longer the adoring young couple who had walked away arm-in-arm from the Mairie, smiling and happy, to share their wedding dinner with the chosen companions of the moment. The wife was now only affectionate by fits and starts, the husband had a settled air of despondency which nothing but wine could banish, and which, like the seven other spirits, returned with greater power after a temporary banishment. The wife loved the husband just well enough to be desperately jealous of his least civility to another woman. The husband had long ceased to be jealous, except of his own honour.