listen patiently to me for a moment. My object is
such as to entitle my words to your respect, not resentment. It is for
your own sake, your mother's, your name, that I brave your indignation
again."

"If it is to repeat what you intimated the other day, Mr. Elmendorf,"
said the girl, in low, firm tone, "I refuse to listen. You have no right
to speak in such a way."

"I have the right to try and save a poor girl from fatal error. I have
devoted the best years of my life to the cause of the poor as against
the rich, the down-trodden against the purse-proud. I should not have
presumed to speak to you on such a subject had I not heard your name
lightly, slightingly used among these very satraps whom Mr. Forrest
hails as companions,--comrades. It is to protect you from the
misjudgment, the censure of others that I strive to warn you. Pardon me
if I recall to you that it was partially, at least, on my
recommendation that you were given the position at the library, and that
now my name as your endorser is measurably involved. Of course if after
what I have to say you persist in receiving Mr. Forrest's--attentions,
as we will call them, you must do so at your own risk."

"Mr. Elmendorf, I have told you that there is no truth whatever in these
reports."

"I do not say there is. It is to warn you of the scandalous, outrageous
things these people in so-called high society say of people who are in
humbler walks of life that I ventured to relate what I'd heard. It is to
obviate the possibility of them in future."

"I have told you, Mr. Elmendorf, that I need no such warning, that I
will listen to no such affront. I refuse to believe that any gentleman
of Mr. Forrest's set has spoken ill of me. I know none of them, they
know nothing of me."

"Knew nothing, perhaps, until your name became linked with his,--how,"
said he, with significant shrug of his shoulders, "I know not, unless he
himself has boyishly boasted of----"

But here Miss Wallen stopped short and faced him. "I will hear no more
of this, either now or hereafter," she said, with blazing eyes, then
turned abruptly, and entered the hall-way of an apartment-house close at
hand and shut the door in his face. It was not her home, as Elmendorf
knew very well, but possibly friends lived there who would give her
refuge and welcome. At all events, he had received his _conge_, and
there was nothing for it but to go; and go he did, in high dudgeon. Not
until Miss Wallen, wa