impossible and seem
the reverse is the proper caper for a debutante. Heigho! I wish girls
smoked here. I would give a little of my small change for a cigarette.
Are you really off, Royal. Well, my love to the lady."

CHAPTER III

THE EX-FIRST LADY

Loftus, letting himself into a hansom, sailed away. At Morris Park
that afternoon there were to be races, and up the maelstrom of Fifth
avenue came scudding motors, fleeting traps.

As the hansom descended the current Loftus nodded to this acquaintance
and to that, occasionally raising his hat as women smiled and bowed.
Occasionally, too, he contemplated what he could of himself in the
little mirror at the side of the cab. He looked triumphant and
treacherous.

Fanny, he reflected, was ideal. But exacting, ambitious even. She had
a perfect mania for matrimony. There was another girl that he had in
mind whom he fancied more reasonable. This other was Marie Durand.

In just what way he had met her was never quite clear. Fanny, who had
witnessed the preliminary skirmish, always believed that he had
picked her up. Afterward, at the time of the trial, it was so
reported. The report was false in addition to being vulgar. Marie
Durand was not of that sort. There was nothing fast or flirtatious
about her. But she was a human being. She had eyes. She had a heart.
By nature she was sensitive. Moreover, she was but nineteen. Being
human, sensitive, and not very old, having eyes to see and a heart
that throbbed, she was impressionable and, to her misfortune, Loftus
impressed her.

Loftus was rather used to impressing people. He saw the girl on Fifth
avenue, followed her home, learned her name--or thought he did--and
sent her flowers every day until he saw her again, when he presumed to
accost her. At that impertinence Marie tilted her nose and trotted on,
distant, disdainful, demure.

But not indifferent. Not oblivious either. Often she had seen him.
Occasionally on a high drag behind a piebald four-in-hand. In crowded
Fifth avenue, drags, with or without piebalds, are infrequent. This
drag Marie had seen not merely tooling along the street but pictured
in the press. With, of course, full accounts of the driver. As a
consequence she knew who he was, knew that he was one of the rich
young men of New York and that he moved and had his being in the upper
circles.

Marie's own sphere of life was obscure. She lived with her father in
Gay street. Her father, a tailor by tr