I am a fraud. I have been trying the old
tricks upon you because I am very much a woman, because I want you
to be my slave and to do the things I want you to do and live in the
world I want you to live in, and I was jealous of this companion for
whose sake you would not accept my invitation. Now I am sane again.
I see that you are not to be treated like other and more foolish
young men. My brother wants you. He wants you for a companion, he
wants you to help him in many ways. He has been used to rely upon me
in such cases. I have my orders to place you there." She pointed to
her feet. "Alas, that I have failed!" she added, laughing once
more. "But, Arnold, we shall be friends?"

"Willingly," he answered, with an immense sense of relief. "Only
remember this. I may have wisdom enough to see the lure, but I may
not always have strength enough not to take it. I have spoken to you
in a moment of sanity, but--well, you are the most compellingly
beautiful person I ever saw, and compellingly beautiful women have
never made a habit of being kind to me, so please--"

"Don't do it any more," she interrupted. "Is that it?"

"As you like."

"Now I am going to put a piece of scarlet geranium in your
buttonhole, and I am going to take you out into the garden and hand
you over to my brother, and tell him that my task is done, that you
are my slave, and that he has only to speak and you will go out into
the world with a revolver in one hand and a sword in the other, and
wear any uniform or fight in any cause he chooses. Come!"

"You know," Arnold said, as they left the room, "I don't know any
man I admire so much as your brother, but I am almost as frightened
of him as I am of you."

"One who talks of fear so glibly," she answered, "seldom knows
anything about it."

"There are as many different sorts of fear as there are different
sorts of courage," he remarked.

"How we are improving!" she murmured. "We shall begin moralizing
soon. Presently I really think we shall compare notes about the
books we have read and the theatres we have been to, and before we
are gray-headed I think one of us will allude to the weather. Now
isn't my brother a wonderful man? Look at that flush upon Miss
Lalonde's cheeks. Aren't you jealous?"

"Miserably!"

Sabatini rose to his feet and greeted his sister after his own
fashion, holding both her hands and kissing her on both cheeks.

"If only," he sighed, "our family had possessed morals equal t