Her thin little laugh was heard incessantly, and people amusedly if they were good-tempered, derisively if they were spiteful, wondered if it really would come to something.

But it did not.

The young foreigner suddenly left New York, making his adieus with entire lightness.

There was the end of it.

He had heard something about lack of income and uncertainty of credit, which had suggested to him that discretion was the better part of valour.