ily. It was against
his grain as a man to see this peerless beauty in trouble and refuse her
petition. Her arms apparent in all their white perfection of roundness,
her exquisitely poised head and lovely face expressed the poignancy of
dismay.

"Is there no security that you will accept, Mr. Jawkins?"

Jarley Jawkins looked at her, and felt the blood surge in his veins.
Mrs. Carey had always exercised a powerful charm over him. He regarded
her as the most beautiful woman of his acquaintance. Ordinarily the
thought of suggesting anything compromising would not have occurred to
him, but her marvellous beauty presenting itself in the same scale with
her necessity, blinded him to prudence and every other consideration but
passion. It was a contest between the cunning of a luscious beauty
striving for a secret end and the self-interest of a mercenary man. The
victory was hers, though scarcely by the means she had expected.

"Yes, Mrs. Carey, there is one." He leered at her a little.

"And that?"

"Yourself." He spoke distinctly and resolutely, for he was a man who
faltered at nothing when his mind was made up, but she could see him
tremble.

His speech was so astounding that she could scarcely believe that she
heard him aright. She felt the blood rush to her cheeks in testimony to
the audacity of the insult. Coming from this man such an avowal inspired
her with rage and disgust. He, the society costermonger, sighing at her
feet! Bah! It seemed too degrading to be true. It could not be true. And
yet there he was and a response was necessary. A politic response, too,
or all was lost. If she rejected him he would have her arrested. Her
mind was made up.

"I know," he continued, as she did not speak, "that my proposition seems
at first distasteful, but there is much to be said in its favor."

"Yes?" she queried, looking at the ground.

"I love you. If we fly to America, what is there to prevent our success?
We are both clever. I am rich, and you are the most beautiful woman in
the world."

"Your offer is so abrupt that I do not know what to answer. Give me
time, Mr. Jawkins."

"No, no; now, at once. The steamer sails day after to-morrow," he
uttered hoarsely, and he seized her hand and kissed it with passion.

"A guinea," she cried banteringly, and she looked into his face with her
beautiful violet eyes, as she had into many another whose love, though
nobly born, had been no less scorned in the days gone by.

"G