Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/230



ITHOUT any further warning the Ruggles family arrived in Paris and put up at the old hotel of France et Choiseul. A short, friendly note—not from Alice but from her father—informed Edward of these facts and invited him to meet them at Voisin's for dinner.

Alice had changed. That was the important thing. She had become cool and aloof. It hardly seemed as if they could have grown up together and been intimate friends.

To the eyes she was lovelier than ever, but mentally she seemed to have traveled a long way and to have left Edward far behind. And mentally she seemed also to have parted company with her father and mother.

They dined and thereafter sat for an hour talking. It was an impersonal conversation—not one of the old warm, intimate, joking talks. Ruggles, a thorough man of the world in New Rochelle, seemed a little provincial and naïve in Paris. It was obvious that he did not know his way about. Mrs. Ruggles had been digging into French his-