er than I thought!"

"She is a fool!" said Wickersham.

Plume shut one eye. "Don't know about that. Madame de Maintenon said:
'There is nothing so clever as a good woman.' Well, what are you
going to do?"

"I don't know."

"Take a drink," said Mr. Plume, to whom this was a frequent solvent of a
difficulty.

Wickersham followed his advice, but remained silent.

In fact, Mr. Wickersham, after having laid most careful plans and
reached the point for which he had striven, found himself, at the very
moment of victory, in danger of being defeated. He had induced Phrony
Tripper to come to New York. She was desperately in love with him, and
would have gone to the ends of the earth for him. But he had promised to
marry her; it was to marry him that she had come. As strong as was her
passion for him, and as vain and foolish as she was, she had one
principle which was stronger than any other feeling--a sense of modesty.
This had been instilled in her from infancy. Among her people a woman's
honor was ranked higher than any other feminine virtue. Her love for
Wickersham but strengthened her resolution, for she believed that,
unless he married her, his life would not be safe from her relatives.
Now, after two hours, in which he had used every persuasion, Wickersham,
to his unbounded astonishment, found himself facing defeat. He had not
given her credit for so much resolution. Her answer to all his efforts
to overcome her determination was that, unless he married her
immediately, she would return home; she would not remain in the hotel a
single night. "I know they will take me back," she said, weeping.

This was the subject of his conversation, now, with his agent, and he
was making up his mind what to do, aided by more or less frequent
applications to the decanter which stood between them.

"What she says is true," declared Plume, his courage stimulated by his
liberal potations. "You won't be able to go back down there any more.
There are a half-dozen men I know, would consider it their duty to blow
your brains out."

Wickersham filled his glass and tossed off a drink. "I am not going down
there any more, anyhow."

"I suppose not. But I don't believe you would be safe even up here.
There is that devil, Dennison: he hates you worse than poison."

"Oh--up here--they aren't going to trouble me up here."

"I don't know--if he ever got a show at you--Why don't you let me
perform the ceremony?" he began persuasively. "She k