ecause I felt that I could never love anyone
else."

Marie started. She was crimson. Starting, she half got from her seat.
Loftus caught at her hand. She disengaged it. But he caught at it
again.

"I love you," he continued, burning her with his words, with the
contact of his fingers, that had intertwisted with hers. "Look at me,
I love your eyes. Speak to me, I love your voice."

But the door opened. Preceded by a precautionary roulade, the ex-first
lady reappeared.

"Allons!" she remarked to the ceiling. "Et maintenant, mademoiselle,
au travail."

Loftus stood up, took Marie's hand again, held it a second, nodded at
the woman. In a moment he had gone.

"Au revoir," the ex-first lady called after him. She turned to the
girl. "A gallant monsieur. And good to look at." Then seating herself
at the piano she attacked the brindisi from "Lucrezia." "Ah! the
segreto!" she interrupted herself to exclaim, "il segreto per esser
felice--the secret of happiness! Mais! There is but one! C'est
l'amour! And with a gallant monsieur like that! And rich! C'est le
reve! N'est ce pas, mon enfant?"

"Je vous en prie, madame," said Marie severely, or rather as severely
as she could, for she was trembling with emotion, saturated with the
love that had been thrown at her head, drenched with it, frightened
too at the apperception of the secret which the aria that her teacher
was strumming revealed.

CHAPTER IV

ENCHANTMENT

Sailing in the hansom down Fifth avenue, Loftus thought of that first
interview with the girl, of the den in which it had occurred and of
his subsequent visits there. Since the introduction he had seen her
three times, seen, too, of course, that she was not up to Fanny, but
he had seen also that she was less ambitious, more tractable in every
way. Besides, one is not loved every afternoon. To him that was the
main point, and of that point he was now tolerably sure.

Suddenly the hansom tacked, veered and landed him at the ex-first
lady's door.

"Bonjour, mon beau seigneur," the woman began when, presently, he
reached her lair. "The little one will not delay."

"And then?"

"Be tranquil. I have other cats to whip."

Mme. Machin was hatted and gloved. Loftus stuck his hand in his
pocket. Mme. Machin was too genteel to notice. From the pocket he drew
a roll of yellow bills. Mme. Machin affected entire unconcern. The
bills he put in her paw. Mme. Machin was so entirely unconscious of
the liberty t