I hastened down town after breakfast, engaged a state-room in the steamer which sailed at one o’clock, and procured a letter of credit on London for three thousand five hundred pounds, payable to Charles Gaspiller, whose signature I left to be forwarded to the banker. I then went to a barber, and had my beard, except the moustache, shaved off. When I entered the parlor of the hotel, Lilian did not at first recognize me. She was talking to a lady and gentleman—a young married couple—whose acquaintance we had made at breakfast. They intended to sail in the afternoon for Havana. The husband was about my size, and not unlike me. He wore only a moustache, and for this reason I had sacrificed my beard. If any detectives, after a few days, should be disposed to ascertain what had become of me, they would be as likely to follow him to Havana as me to Liverpool. It was well to be prudent and take advantage of circumstances.
I HAD avoided writing my name in the register of the hotel, for I did not wish to leave any recorded traces of my presence in the city. It occurred to me that perhaps Lilian had told her name to her new-made friends, but they would soon be in the tropics, and out of the reach of detectives. I regarded myself as very shrewd, and I could not exactly see how it was possible for any one to obtain a trace of me, after the steamer had departed.
I had given my name at the steamer office as Charles Gaspiller, and the money for my bill of exchange was to be drawn in London under this appellation. I don’t know how I happened to select this name. It was a French word which probably came back to my memory from my studies at the high school; but I had forgotten its meaning, though I could read French tolerably well. When I came to ascertain its signification, I was not a little surprised to find that it exactly fitted my case, for it means “to waste, to squander, to lavish.” It was entirely by accident that I chose this word, and I certainly should not have done so had I been aware that it covered my case so exactly.
But if I succeeded in concealing my identity from others, I could not hide it from my wife. If I was Mr. Gaspiller, she must of necessity be Mrs. Gaspiller. We were not at all fitted to pass ourselves off as French people, for my pronunciation had been so neglected at school, that I could hardly speak a word of the language with which I was tolerably familiar by the eye. Lilian knew still less of it. I knew that double _l_ in French had a liquid sound, and I called the word Gas-pee-ay. It would be singular that I should have a French name, pronounced with a French accent, and yet not be able to speak the language. I was afraid I had made an unpleasant bed for myself. But I determined as soon as I reached Paris to master the language.