Erlach Court by Ossip Schubin — Read

Stella has scarcely closed her eyes, when the train reaches Paris, about six o'clock. The morning is cold and damp, the usual darkness of the time of day disagreeably enhanced by the white gloom of an autumn fog, -- a gloom which the street-lamps are powerless to counteract, and in which they show like lustreless red specks.

Through this depressing white gloom, Stella and her mother are driven in a rattling little omnibus, with a couple of other travellers, through a Paris as silent as the grave, to the Hotel Bedford, Rue Pasquier. An Englishwoman at Nice once recommended it to the Baroness as that wonder of wonders, a first-class hotel with second-class prices, and it is under English patronage. English lords and ladies now and then occupy the first story, and consequently the garret-rooms are continually inhabited by impoverished but highly distinguished scions of English "county families. " In the reading-room, between 'Burke's Peerage' and Lodge's 'Vicissitudes of Families' is placed an album containing the photographs of two peeresses. The _clientele_ is as aristocratic as it is economical: each despises all the rest, and one and all dispute the weekly bills. Stella and her mother are by no means enchanted with this hotel, and they sally forth as soon as they are somewhat rested, in search of furnished lodgings.