“Something is on fire! Go, go, inform the police; fetch some water, and let me faint!”
“There isn’t the least danger,” cried Fifi; “it is only my improper ball gown which is burning in my grate.” And they saw, through the open door, the ball gown stuffed in the grate, in which a fire was smoldering. Some pieces of coal were piled upon it, to keep it from blazing up, and it was being slowly consumed, with perfect safety to the surroundings and an odor as if a warehouse were afire.
Madame Bourcet concluded not to faint, and she and Louis stood staring at each other. But they were not the only ones to be startled. The other tenants in the house had taken the alarm, and the bell in Madame Bourcet’s lobby was being frantically pulled. Fifi ran and opened the door. There stood Doctor Mailly, the eminent surgeon, who had the apartment above the Bourcet’s; Colonel and Madame Bruart, who lived in the apartment below, and about half a dozen others of the highly respectable persons who inhabited this highly respectable house.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Fifi, in the tone of easy confidence which the stage had bred in her, “there is nothing whatever to be alarmed about. I am simply burning up a gown which Monsieur Louis Bourcet, my fiancé, objected to—and as—as—I am madly in love with him, I destroy the gown in order to win his approval. Can any of you—at least those who know what it is to love and be beloved—think me wrong?”
There was a dead silence. Louis Bourcet, his face crimson, advanced and said sternly to Fifi:
“Mademoiselle, I desire to say that I consider your conduct in regard to the gown most uncalled for, most sensational and wholly opposed to my wishes.”
“So you wanted to see me wear it again, did you?” cried Fifi, roguishly; and then, relapsing into a sentimental attitude, she said: “But you don’t know how much pleasure it gives me to sacrifice that gown for you, dear Louis.”
At this, Louis Bourcet, with a flaming face, replied:
“I beg of you, Mademoiselle, not to call me Louis; and your expressions of endearment are as unpleasant to me as they are improper.”
The lookers-on began to laugh, and turned away, except Colonel Bruart, a fat old retired cavalry colonel, on whom a pretty face never failed of its effect.