LITTLE NOBODY

BY

Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller

HART SERIES No. 53

COPYRIGHT 1886 BY GEORGE MUNRO.

PUBLISHED BY

THE ARTHUR WESTBROOK COMPANY

Cleveland, O., U. S. A.

[LITTLE NOBODY.]

[CONTENTS]

[CHAPTER I.]
[CHAPTER II.]
[CHAPTER III.]
[CHAPTER IV.]
[CHAPTER V.]
[CHAPTER VI.]
[CHAPTER VII.]
[CHAPTER VIII.]
[CHAPTER IX.]
[CHAPTER X.]
[CHAPTER XI.]
[CHAPTER XII.]
[CHAPTER XIII.]
[CHAPTER XIV.]
[CHAPTER XV.]
[CHAPTER XVI.]
[CHAPTER XVII.]
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
[CHAPTER XIX.]
[CHAPTER XX.]
[CHAPTER XXI.]
[CHAPTER XXII.]
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
[CHAPTER XXIV.]
[CHAPTER XXV.]
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
[CHAPTER XXIX]
[CHAPTER XXX.]
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
[CHAPTER XXXIII.]
[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
[CHAPTER XXXV.]
[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
[CHAPTER XXXVII.]
[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]
[CHAPTER XXXIX.]
[CHAPTER XL.]
[CHAPTER XLI.]
[CHAPTER XLII.]
[CHAPTER XLIII.]
[CHAPTER XLIV.]
[CHAPTER XLV.]
[CHAPTER XLVI.]
[CHAPTER XLVII.]
[CHAPTER XLVIII.]

[CHAPTER I.]

He was a Northern journalist, and it was in the interest of his paper that he found himself, one bright March morning, in New Orleans, almost dazed by the rapidity with which he had been whirled from the ice and snow of the frozen North to the sunshine and flowers of the sunny South.

He was charmed with the quaint and unique Crescent City. It was a totally different world from that in which he had been reared—a summer land, warm, indolent, luxurious, where one plucked the golden oranges from the dark-green boughs, laden at once with flowers and fruit, and where the senses were taken captive by the sensuous perfume of rare flowers that, in his Northern land, grew only within the confines of the close conservatory. Then, too, the dark, handsome faces of the people, and their mixture of foreign tongues, had their own peculiar charm. Nothing amused him so much as a stroll through the antique French Market, with its lavish abundance of tropic vegetables, fruits, and flowers, vended by hucksters of different nationalities in the Babel of languages that charmed his ear with the languorous softness of the Southern accent.

He had a letter of introduction to a member of the Jockey Club, and this famous organization at once adopted him, and, as he phrased it, "put him through." The theaters, the carnival, the races, all whirled past in a blaze of splendor never to be forgotten; for it was at the famous Metairie Race-course that he first met Mme. Lorraine.

But you must not think, reader, because I forgot to tell you his name at first, that he is the Little Nobody of my story. He was not little at all, but tall and exceedingly well-favored, and signed his name Eliot Van Zandt.

Mme. Lorraine was a retired actress—ballet-dancer, some said. She was a French woman, airy and charming, like the majority of her race. The Jockey Club petted her, although they freely owned that she was a trifle fast, and did not have the entrée of some of the best houses in the city. However, there were some nice, fashionable people not so strait-laced who sent her cards to their fêtes, and now and then accepted return invitations, so that it could not be said that she was outside the pale of society.

Mme. Lorraine took a fancy to the good-looking Yankee, as she dubbed him, and gave him carte blanche to call at her bijou house in Esplanade Street. He accepted with outward eagerness and inward indifference. He was too familiar with women of her type at the North—fast, frivolous, and avaricious—to be flattered by her notice or her invitation.

"She may do for the rich Jockey Club, but her acquaintance is too expensive a luxury for a poor devil of a newspaper correspondent," he told the Club. "She has card-parties, of course, and I am too poor to gamble."

Pierre Carmontelle laughed, and told him to call in the afternoon, when there was no gambling in the recherché saloon.

"To see madame at home, informally, with her little savage, would be rich, mon ami. You would get a spicy paragraph for your newspaper," he said.

"Her little savage?"

"Do not ask me any questions, for I shall not answer," said Carmontelle, still laughing. "Perhaps Remond there will gratify your curiosity. The little vixen flung her tiny slipper into his face once when he tried to kiss her, under the influence of a soupçon too much of madame's foamy champagne."

"Madame's daughter, perhaps?" said Van Zandt, looking at Remond; but the latter only scowled and muttered, under his breath:

"The little demon!"

He thought they were guying him, and decided not to call in Esplanade Street.

But it was only one week later that he saw Mme. Lorraine again at Metairie. Her carriage was surrounded by admirers, and she was betting furiously on the racing, but she found time to see the Yankee and beckon him importunately with her dainty, tan-kidded hand.

They made way for him to come to her where she sat among her silken cushions, resplendent in old-gold satin, black lace, and Maréchal Niel roses, her beautiful, brilliant face wreathed in smiles, her toilet so perfectly appointed that she looked barely twenty-five, although the Club admitted that she must be past forty.

"It is fifteen years since Lorraine married her off the stage, and she had been starring it ten years before he ever saw her," said Carmontelle, confidentially.

The big, almond-shaped dark eyes flashed reproachfully, as she said, with her prettiest moue:

"You naughty Yankee, you have not called!"

"I have been too busy," he fibbed; "but I am coming this evening."

"Quel plaisir!" she exclaimed, and then the racing distracted their attention again.

The blaze of sunshine fell on one of the gayest scenes ever witnessed. The old race-course was surrounded by thousands upon thousands of people in carriages, on horseback, and afoot. The grand stand was packed with a living mass.

The tropical beauty and rich costumes of the Louisiana ladies lent glow and brilliancy to the exciting scene. The racing was superb, and men and women were betting freely on their favorites. Gloves and jewels and thousands of dollars were won and lost that day.

The most interesting event of the day was on. A purse of gold had been offered for the most skillful and daring equestrienne, and the fair contestants were ranged before the judge's stand, magnificently mounted on blooded steeds curveting with impatient ardor, their silver-mounted trappings glistening in the sunlight, and their handsome riders clothed faultlessly in habits of dark rich cloth fitting like a glove. It was truly a splendid sight, and the Jockey Club immediately went wild, and cheered as if they would split their throats. Even Mme. Lorraine brought her gloved hands impetuously together as the five beauties rode dauntlessly forward.

"Jove! how magnificent!" Carmontelle burst forth. "But, madame, look!" excitedly. "Who is that little tot on the Arab so like your own? Heavens! it is—it is—" Without completing the sentence, he fell back convulsed with laughter.

Every one was looking eagerly at the slip of a girl on the back of the beautiful, shiny-coated Arab. She rode skillfully, with daring grace, yet reckless abandon—a girl, a child almost, the lissom, budding figure sitting erect and motionless in the saddle, a stream of ruddy golden hair flying behind her on the breeze, the small, white face staring straight before her as she swept on impetuously to the victory that every one was proclaiming would perch upon her banner.

Mme. Lorraine's face paled with blended dismay and anger. She muttered, loud enough for the Yankee to overhear:

"Mon Dieu! the daring little hussy! She shall pay for this escapade!"

But to her admirers she exclaimed, a moment later, with a careless, significant shrug of the shoulders:

"She has stolen a march upon me. But, pshaw! it is nothing for her, the little savage! You should have seen her mother, the bare-back rider, galloping at her highest speed and jumping through the hoops in the ring!"

"Vive the little savage!" cried Remond, his dark face relaxing into enthusiasm. "She has stolen a march upon you, indeed, madame, has she not?"

Madame frowned and retorted, sharply:

"Yes, monsieur; but I will make her pay for this! The idea of her racing my Arab, my splendid Arab, that I care for so guardedly! Why, one of his slender hoofs is worth more to me than the girl's whole body! Oh, yes, I will make her pay!"

The journalist's dancing gray eyes turned on her face curiously.

"She belongs to you?"

"In a way, yes," madame answered, with a sharp, unpleasant laugh. "Her mother, my maid, had the bad taste to die in my employ and leave the baggage on my hands. She has grown up in my house like an unchecked weed, and has furnished some amusement for the Jockey Club."

"As a sort of Daughter of the Regiment," said one, laughing; but madame frowned the more darkly.

"Nonsense, Markham," she said, shortly. "Do not put such notions into Monsieur Van Zandt's head. Let him understand, once for all, she is a cipher, a little nobody."

She did not quite understand the gleam in the dark-gray eyes, but he smiled carelessly enough, and replied:

"At least she is very brave."

"A madcap," madame answered, shortly; and just then a shriek of triumph from a thousand throats rent the air. The meteor-like figure of the golden-haired girl on the flying Arab had distanced every competitor, and the applause was tremendous. In the midst of it all she reined in her gallant steed a moment before the judges' stand, then, before the dust cleared away, she was galloping rapidly off the grounds, followed by every eye among them all; while Mme. Lorraine, beneath an indifferent air, concealed a hidden volcano of wrath and passion.

She stayed for the rest of the races, but her mind was only half upon them now, and she made some wild bets, and lost every stake. She could think of nothing but the daring girl who had taken her own Selim, her costly, petted Arab, and ridden him before her eyes in that wild race in which she had won such a signal victory.

[CHAPTER II.]

Van Zandt determined to keep his promise to call in Esplanade Street that evening. He felt a languid curiosity over Mme. Lorraine's charge, the daring girl whose whole young body was worth less to madame than one of the slender hoofs of her favorite Selim.

He arrived early, and was ushered into an exquisite little salon all in olive and gold—fit setting for madame's ripe, dusky beauty. She was alone, looking magnificent in ruby velvet with cream lace garnishing and ruby jewelry, and the smile with which she received him was welcome itself.

"Ah, mon ami! I was wondering if you would really come," she said, archly. "Sit here beside me, and tell me how you enjoyed the day?"

She swept aside her glowing draperies, and gave him a seat by her side on the olive satin sofa. He accepted it with an odd sensation of disappointment, despite her luring beauty and the sensuous comfort and luxury of the room, whose air was heavy with the perfume of flowers in vases and pots all about them.

He thought, disappointedly:

"Am I not to see her Little Nobody?"

Apparently not, for no one entered, and madame sat contentedly by his side, talking arch nothings to him, fluttering her fan coquettishly, and laughing at his careless repartee. Not a word all the while of her whom madame had sworn should pay for her madcap freak of to-day.

By and by came Carmontelle, Remond, and Markham. They laughed at finding Van Zandt before them.

"But, madame, where is your Little Nobody?" queried the gay Carmontelle. "We are come to lay our hearts at her feet. Know that she has supplanted you in the adoration of the Jockey Club. Her victory to-day makes us all her slaves."

Madame gave utterance to a light, mocking laugh as she touched the gilded bell-cord close to her hand, and all eyes turned to the door. Five, almost ten, minutes passed, then it was softly opened, and a girl came in with a silver salver heaped high with luscious tropical fruit.

Van Zandt recognized her as the winner of the race by the wealth of tawny golden hair that flowed down her back below her slim, girlish waist. He waited, with his eyes on the strange young face, for madame to speak some words of introduction, but none came. Just as any other servant might have entered, so was this girl permitted to enter. The fellows from the Jockey Club nodded familiarly at her, and received a sulky stare in return as she dispensed her fruit among them with impatient courtesy.

When she paused, last of all, before Mme. Lorraine, with her salver of fruit, she seemed first to observe the tall, fair man by her side. She started and fixed her big, solemn, dark eyes half wonderingly upon him, and for a second they gazed silently and curiously at each other.

He saw a girl of fifteen or so, very petite for her age, and made to look more so by the fashion of her dress, which consisted mainly of a loosely fashioned white embroidered slip, low in the neck, short in the sleeves, and so short in the skirt that it reached the verge of immodesty by betraying much more than the conventional limit of the tapering ankles and rounded limbs. Madame had evidently aimed more at picturesqueness than propriety in choosing her dress, and she had certainly attained her point. Anything more full of unstudied grace and unconscious beauty than the little serving-maid it would be hard to imagine. The contrast of tawny golden hair with dark eyes and slender, jetty brows, with features molded in the most bewitching lines, and form as perfect as a sculptor's model, made up a tout ensemble very pleasing to the journalist's observant eyes. There was but one defect, and that was a certain sullenness of eyes and expression that bespoke a fiery spirit at bay, a nature full of repressed fire and passion ready to burst into lava-flame at a touch, a word.

For her she saw a man of twenty-five or six, tall, manly, and handsome in a splendid intellectual fashion, with fair hair clustered above a grand white brow, blue-gray eyes bright and laughing, a fair mustache ornamenting lips at once firm and sweet, a chin that was grave and full of power in spite of the womanish dimple that cleft it—altogether a most attractive face, and one that influenced her subtly, for some of the sullenness faded from her face, and with brightening eyes she exclaimed, with all the freedom of a child:

"Oh, I know you at sight! You are madame's handsome Yankee, n'est ce pas?"

He rose, laughing, and with his most elaborate bow.

"Eliot Van Zandt, at your service," he said. "Yes, I am the Yankee. And you?"

He saw the sullen gleam come back into her eyes, as she answered curtly, and, as it seemed, with repressed wrath:

"Oh. I am Little Nobody, madame says. I have always been too poor to have even a name. Have some fruit, please."

Madame tittered behind her elaborate fan, and the members of the Jockey Club exchanged glances. Eliot took an orange mechanically, and then the girl put the salver down and turned to go.

But Mme. Lorraine's dark eyes looked over the top of her fan with sarcastic amusement.

"Remain," she said, with cold brevity; and the girl flung herself angrily down into a chair, with her hands crossed and her tiny slippers dangling. With uplifted eyes she studied intently the face of the stranger.

"Handsome, is he, madcap?" at length queried Carmontelle, full of amusement.

The large eyes turned on his face scornfully.

"Handsomer than any of the ugly old Jockey Club!" she replied, with decision.

"We shall all be very jealous of this Yankee," said Markham. "Here we have been adoring you ever since you were a baby, ma'amselle, and you throw us over in a bunch for the sake of this charming stranger. You are cruel, unjust." He began to hum, softly, meaningly:

"'Do not trust him, gentle lady,
Though his words be low and sweet;
Heed not him that kneels before thee,
Gently pleading at thy feet.'"

The song went no further, for the girl looked at him with large eyes of sarcastic amusement and said, curtly:

"If I had such an atrocious voice as yours, I should not try to sing."

A sally of laughter greeted the words, and the sulky countenance relaxed into a smile.

Van Zandt studied the young face closely, his artistic taste charmed by its bright, warm beauty, full of Southern fire and passion.

"How came she, the nameless child of a circus-rider, by her dower of high-bred, faultless beauty?" he thought, in wonder, noticing the dainty white hands, the

"Delicate Arab arch of her feet,
And the grace that, light and bright as the crest
Of a peacock, sits on her shining head;
And she knows it not. Oh, if she knew it!
To know her beauty might half undo it."

Mme. Lorraine, at his side, watched him with lowered lids and compressed lips. At last, tapping his arm with her fan, and smiling archly, she said, in an under-tone:

"Beautiful, is she not, mon ami? But—that is all. Her mind is a void, a blank—capable of nothing but the emotions of anger or hatred, the same as the brute creation. I have tried to educate her into a companion, but in vain; so she can never be more than a pretty toy to me—no more nor less than my Maltese kitten or my Spitz puppy, although I like to see her about me, the same as I love all beautiful things."

He heard her in amazement. Soulless—that beautiful, spirited-looking creature! Could it be? He saw the dark eyes lighten as the men began to praise her dauntless riding that day. They were very expressive, those large, almond-shaped eyes. Surely a soul dwelt behind those dark-fringed lids.

Some one proposed cards, and madame assented with alacrity, without seeing Eliot Van Zandt's gesture of disgust. He refused point-blank to take a hand in the game, and said, with reckless audacity:

"Do not mind me; I am always unlucky at play; so I will amuse myself instead with Little Nobody."

Her eyes flashed, but when Mme. Lorraine vacated the seat upon the sofa, she came over and took it, not with any appearance of forwardness, but as a simple matter of course. Then, looking up at him, she said, with child-like directness:

"And so you are a Yankee? I am surprised. I have always hated the Yankees, you know. My father was a Confederate soldier, madame says. He was killed the last year of the war, just a month before I was born."

Mme. Lorraine looked around with a dark frown, but Van Zandt pretended not to see it as he answered:

"Do you mean that you will not have me for your friend, ma'amselle, because I was born in Boston, and because my father fell fighting for the Stars and Stripes?"

"A friend? What is that, monsieur?" she queried, naïvely; and Markham, to whom the conversation was perfectly audible from his corner of the card-table, looked around, and said, teasingly:

"It is something that you will never be able to keep, ma'amselle, by reason of your pretty face. All your friends will become your lovers."

"Hold your tongue, Colonel Markham; I was not talking to you, and it's ill manners to break into a conversation," said the girl, shortly.

She broke off a white camellia from a vase near her, and held it lightly between her taper fingers as she again addressed herself to the journalist:

"I like your word 'friend.' It has a nice sound. But I don't quite understand."

"I must try to explain it to you," he replied, smiling. "I may tell you, since Markham has broached the subject, that the poets have said that friendship is love in disguise, but the dictionary gives it a more prosaic meaning. Let us find it as it is in Webster."

"Webster?" stammeringly, and Mme. Lorraine looked around with her disagreeably sarcastic laugh.

"Monsieur Van Zandt, you bewilder my little savage. She can not read."

But a light of comprehension flashed instantly into the puzzled eyes. She pulled Eliot's sleeve.

"You mean books. Come, you will find plenty in the library."

He followed her into the pretty room beyond the olive satin portière, where they found plenty of books indeed. She pointed to them, and looked at him helplessly.

He found Webster on the top shelf of a rich inlaid book-case, and was half-stifled with dust as he drew it down from the spot where it had rested undisturbed for years. He sneezed vigorously, and his companion hastened to dust it off with her tiny handkerchief.

"Now!" she said, anxiously, spreading the big book open on a table before him.

[CHAPTER III.]

The leaves fluttered with her hasty movement, and a folded sheet of parchment fell out upon the floor. As he turned the pages to the F's she picked up the paper and held it in her hands, looking curiously at the bold, clear superscription on the back, and the big red seal; but it told nothing to her uneducated eyes, and with an unconscious sigh, she pushed it back into the dictionary, her hand touching his in the movement and sending an odd thrill of pleasure along his nerves.

He read aloud, in his clear, full tones:

"'Friend.—One who, entertaining for another sentiments of esteem, respect, and affection, from personal predilection, seeks his society and welfare; a well-wisher, an intimate associate.'"

She stood by him, her hands resting on the table, trembling with pleasure, her face glowing.

"It is beautiful," she exclaimed. "I thought the word sounded very sweet. And—you—you want to be my friend?"

The most finished coquette might have envied the artless naïveté of her look and tone, yet she was

"Too innocent for coquetry,
Too fond for idle scorning."

Touched by this new side of her character, he put his hand impulsively on the little one resting close by his on the table with a gentle pressure.

"Child, I will be your friend if you will let me," he said, in a gentle tone, and not dreaming of all to which that promise was swiftly leading.

"I shall be so glad," she said, in a voice so humble, and with so tender a face, that the people in the other room would scarce have recognized her as the little savage and vixen they called her.

But Pierre Carmontelle, always full of mischief and banter, had deliberately sauntered in, and heard the compact of friendship between the two who, until to-night, had been utter strangers. He gave his friend a quizzical smile.

"Ever heard of Moore's 'Temple to Friendship,' Van Zandt?" he inquired, dryly. "Let me recall it to your mind."

He brought a book from a stand near by, opened it, and read aloud, with dry significance, in his clear voice:

"'A Temple to Friendship,' said Laura, enchanted,
'I'll build in this garden—the thought is divine!'
Her temple was built, and she now only wanted
An image of Friendship to place on the shrine.
She flew to a sculptor who sat down before her
A Friendship the fairest his art could invent;
But so cold and so dull that the youthful adorer
Saw plainly this was not the idol she meant.

"'Oh, never!' she cried, 'could I think of enshrining
An image whose looks are so joyless and dim;
But you, little god, upon roses reclining,
We'll make, if you please sir, a Friendship of him.'
So the bargain was struck; with the little god laden,
She joyfully flew to her shrine in the grove;
'Farewell,' said the sculptor, 'you're not the first maiden
Who came but for Friendship and took away Love!'"

He shut the book and laughed, for he had the satisfaction of seeing a warm flush mount to the temples of the young journalist, but the girl, so young, so ignorant, so strangely beautiful, looked at him unabashed. Evidently she knew no more of love than she did of friendship. They were alike meaningless terms to her uncultured mind. Frowning impatiently, she said:

"Carmontelle, why did you intrude upon us here? I wanted to talk to Monsieur Van Zandt."

"And I, ma'amselle, wanted to talk to you. Madame Lorraine was very angry with you for racing Selim to-day. What did she do to you?"

The large eyes brightened angrily, and a hot rose-flush broke through the creamy pallor of her oval cheek.

"Beat me!" she said, bitterly.

"No!" from both men in a shocked tone.

"But yes," she replied, with a sudden return of sullenness. With a swift movement she drew the mass of hair from her white shoulders, which she pushed up out of her low dress with a childish movement.

"Look at the marks on my back," she said.

They did look, and shuddered at the sight. The thick tresses of hair had hidden the long, livid marks of a cruel lash on the white flesh. There were a dozen or so of stripes, and the flesh was cut in some places till the blood had oozed through.

The girl's eyes flashed, and she clinched her little hands tightly.

"I hate that woman!" she muttered, fiercely. "Oh, it is cruel, cruel, to be nobody, to have no one but her, to be nothing but a pretty plaything, as she calls me, like her Spitz and her cat, her parrot and monkey! I mean to run away. It was for that I rode to-day—to win the gold—but—"

"But—what?" said Van Zandt, huskily.

She answered with passionate pride:

"When she beat me—when she flung my poverty in my face—when she said I should be starving but for her bread—I flung the purse of gold down at her feet—to—to—pay!"

The hard glitter of the dark eyes dissolved in quick tears. She dropped the golden tresses back on her lacerated shoulders, flung her arms before her face, and hard, choking sobs shook the slight, young form. The two men gazed on her, pale, moved, speechless.

Eliot Van Zandt thought of his fair, young sisters, scarcely older than this girl, on whose lovely frames the winds of heaven were scarce permitted to blow roughly. Why, if any one had struck Maud or Edith such a blow, he should have sent a bullet through his heart, so fierce would be his anger.

He looked at Carmontelle.

"Monsieur Lorraine—does he permit this?" he asked, indignantly.

"Lorraine had been in a mad-house fourteen years—sent there by the madness of jealousy," was the unexpected reply.

Madame's gay, shrill laugh rang out from the salon where she was winning golden eagles from her friends. The journalist shuddered and wondered if the brilliant woman ever remembered the man gone insane for her sake.

Ma'amselle's hard, bitter sobs ceased suddenly as they had begun. She dashed the tears from her eyes, and said, with bitter resignation:

"N'importe! It is not the first time—perhaps it may not be the last. But, mon Dieu, it is better to be only her plaything, petted one moment, whipped the next, as she does her mischievous monkey and snarling puppy. She says she should make me live in the kitchen if I were ugly instead of being so pretty. She wants everything about her to be pretty. But, say nothing of all this, you two," lifting a warning taper finger. "It could do no good—she would only beat me more."

"Too true!" assented Pierre Carmontelle, sadly.

[CHAPTER IV.]

They returned to the salon, and Mme. Lorraine flung down her cards and arose.

"Messieurs, I will give you your revenge another time. Now I must give some attention to my Northern friend. Come, Monsieur Van Zandt, let me show you my garden by moonlight."

She slipped her hand through his arm and led him through a side-door and out into a tropical garden bathed in a full flood of summer moonlight. Carmontelle drew Little Nobody out by the hand. Markham and Remond followed.

To Van Zandt's unaccustomed eyes the scene was full of weird, delicious splendor. Fountains sparkled in the moonlight, watering the stems of tall, graceful palm-trees and massive live-oaks, whose gigantic branches were draped in wide, trailing banners of funereal-gray moss. Immense green ferns bordered the basins of the fountains, white lilies nodded on tall, leafy stems, roses vied with orange-blossoms in filling the air with fragrance, and passion-flowers climbed tall trellies and flung their large flowers lavishly to the breeze. Madame, with her jeweled hand clinging to Van Zandt's arm, her jewels gleaming, walked along the graveled paths in advance of the rest, talking to him in her gay fashion that was odd and enchanting from its pretty mixture of broken French and English, interlarded here and there with a Spanish phrase. She was bent on subduing the heart of the young journalist, his coldness and indifference having roused her to a fatal pique and interest—fatal because her love was like the poisonous upas-tree, blighting all that it touched.

She had brought him out here for a purpose. In the soft, delusive moonlight she looked fair and young as a woman of twenty, and here she could weave her Circean spells the best. She became soft and sentimental with her light badinage. Bits of poetry flowed over the crimson lips, the dark eyes were raised to his often, coyly and sweetly, the jeweled hand slipped until her throbbing wrist rested lightly on his. Every gracious, cunning art of coquetry was employed, and the victim seemed very willing indeed to be won.

But when they bantered him next day he laughed with the rest.

"Ad nauseam!" he replied, boldly.

But he went again that night to Esplanade Street, drawn by an indefinable power to the presence of the cruel, beautiful woman and her fawn-like, lovely dependent.

"Madame Lorraine was engaged, but she would come to him soon," said the sleek page who admitted him to the salon, which a quick glance showed him was quite deserted.

He waited awhile, then grew weary of the stillness and silence, and went out through the open side-door into the charming garden.

The quiet walks gave back no echo of his firm tread as he paused and threw himself upon a rustic bench beside a tinkling fountain, but presently from beyond the great live-oak with its gray moss drapery there came to him the sound of a clear, sweet voice.

"The little ma'amselle," he thought, at first, and deemed it no harm to listen.

"It is a bargain, then, monsieur. You take the girl, and I am a thousand dollars richer. Ciel! but what a rare revenge I shall have for yesterday;" and Mme. Lorraine's low laugh, not sweet and coquettish now, but full of cruel venom, rang out on the evening air.

The night was warm, but Eliot Van Zandt shuddered through all his strong, proud frame, as the voice of Remond answered:

"Revenge—ha! ha! Mine shall be gained, too. How I hate and love the little savage in one breath, and I have sworn she shall pay for that slipper flung in my face. It is a costly price, but to gratify love and hate alike I will not stop at the cost."

"You are right. Once I refused when you asked for her because I prized my pretty, innocent, ignorant toy. But yesterday the fires of hell were kindled in my breast. She is no longer a child. When she rode Selim there amid the plaudits of thousands, she became my rival, hated and dreaded, and I swore she should pay for her triumph at bitter cost. Last night did you see her with Van Zandt, her sly coquetry, her open preference? In her sleep, as she lay coiled on her cot, she murmured his name and smiled. It was enough. I swore I would hesitate no longer. I would give you your will."

Rooted to his seat with horror, Van Zandt sat speechless, his blood curdling at Remond's demoniac laugh.

"You have a penchant for the quill-driver?" scoffingly said the Frenchman.

"He is a new sensation. His indifference piques me to conquer him"—carelessly; "but to the point. I will drug her to sleep to-night, and you shall carry her off. Bring a carriage at midnight—all shall be ready."

"Done! But when they ask for her—for the Jockey Club has gone wild with admiration over the little vixen—what can you say?"

"I overheard her last night threatening to run away. She was in the library with Carmontelle and the Yankee. What more easy than to say she has carried out her threat?"

Their low, jubilant laughter echoed in the young journalist's ear like the mirth of fiends. There was a promise of money that night, injunctions of caution and secrecy; then the conspirators swept away toward the house, and Van Zandt remained there, in the shadowy night, unseen, unsuspected, brooding over what he had heard uttered behind the drooping veil of long, gray moss.

Carmontelle had said, laughingly, that a visit to madame and her little savage would furnish a spicy paragraph for his paper. He thought, grimly, that here was the item with a vengeance.

Oh! to think of that heartless woman and man, and of the simple, ignorant, lovely child bartered to shame for the sake of a fiendish revenge! The blood in his veins ran hotly, as if turned to fire.

"My God! I must do something," he muttered, and then started with a stifled cry of alarm.

From among the shrubberies close by something had started up with a sobbing cry. It ran toward him, and fell down at his feet; it was poor Little Nobody.

"You have heard? I saw you when you came!" she gasped, wildly.

"Yes, poor child!" he answered.

"Sold! sold, like a slave, to the man I hate!" she cried, fearfully, her dark eyes distended in terror. "Oh, monsieur, he kissed me once, and I hated his kiss worse than madame's blow. I flung my slipper in his face, and he swore revenge. Once in his power, he would murder me. Oh, you promised to be my friend"—wildly—"save me! save me now!"

[CHAPTER V.]

It was a strange, picturesque scene there in the starlit garden, with its stately palms, its immense rough cactuses, its fountains, and flowers. The man sat there with doubt, trouble, and sympathy looking out of his frank eyes at the girl who knelt before him, her delicate, tapering hands pressed together, her white face looking up piteously, the tears raining from her splendid eyes, and the long veil of golden hair sweeping loosely about her slender form, that passionate appeal thrilling over her crimson lips:

"Save me! save me!"

"Poor child, what can I do?" he uttered, almost unconsciously, and she answered, wildly:

"Only tell me where to fly for refuge! I am dazed and frightened. I know not where to go unless to the deep, dark river, and fling myself in. But I do not want to die. I only want to get away from this terrible place to some happier spot! Ah! certainement, le bon Dieu sent you here, monsieur, to help me, to save me!"

All her trust was in him, all her confidence. He had promised to be her friend, and in a simplicity and innocence as complete as a child's, she claimed his promise. Nay, more, she claimed that God had sent him to her aid in this dark hour of distress.

His mind was a chaos of contending emotions. That he must help her he had decided already in his mind. But how?

No answer presented itself to the vexing question. His thoughts were in such a tumult that clear, coherent thinking was an impossibility.

A moment, and he said, gently:

"Yes, I will help you, my child. I were less than man could I let this thing go on and make no attempt to rescue you from so dark a fate. But—"

He paused, and she waited anxiously with her straining gaze fixed on his troubled face.

"But," he went on slowly, "I can not see my way clear yet; I must think, must decide. And it is not safe to remain out here longer. They may come out here and find me at any moment. Little one, can you trust me to go away and think it all over, and then come back to you?"

A moment of silence, then she rose and stood before him.

"Yes, yes, I will trust you," she said, gently; then, with sudden desperation, "Should—should you not come back I will never be taken by him. There—is—still—the—river!"

"Do not think of that," he said, quickly; "I will soon return. Trust me wholly. Have I not promised to be your friend?"

"Yes, yes," eagerly.

She put out her hands as if to clasp his arm, then suddenly withdrew them. Frank and child-like as she was, she was coy and shy as a fawn. She clasped her delicate hands before her, and stood waiting.

"Now, tell me, is there not some way by which I can gain the street without returning to the house?" said Van Zandt.

"Yes, monsieur. Follow me," said the girl, turning swiftly and going across the garden to a small gate in the wall that opened on the street.

She turned a key in the lock and opened it wide as he came up, thrusting shyly into his hand some dewy rosebuds she had plucked from a vine that clambered to the top of the wall.

"Do not fail me, mon ami," she breathed, softly.

"You can trust me," he said, again. "Now go back to the garden or the house. Be as natural as you can. Do not let them suspect your dangerous knowledge."

She nodded her bright head wisely, and the next moment he was out in the street, the gate shut against him, alone with the thronging thoughts awakened by the occurrences of the last hour. He pulled a cigar from his breast-pocket, lighted it, and walked slowly along the wide and almost deserted street, under the shade of the tall trees that bordered the walk, his calmness gradually returning under the influence of the narcotic weed.

Within the flowery garden the little ma'amselle, so strangely lovely, so ignorant and innocent, with that deadly peril menacing her young life, flung herself down upon a garden-seat and gave herself up to impatient waiting for the return of her knight, her brave Sir Galahad.

"How sweet are looks that ladies bend
On whom their favors fall;
For them I battle to the end
To save from shame and thrall."

[CHAPTER VI.]

Van Zandt had gone but a few squares, with his eyes cast down and his mind very busy, before he stumbled up against a man coming from an opposite direction. Both being tall and strong, they recoiled with some force from the shock, each muttering confused apologies.

But the next moment there was an exclamation:

"Van Zandt, upon my word!" cried the musical voice of Pierre Carmontelle. "Why, man, what the deuce ails you, to go butting up against a fellow in that striking fashion?"

"Carmontelle!"

"Yes—or, at least, what is left of him after your villainous assault. Where were your eyes, mon ami, that you run up against a fellow so recklessly? And where have you been, anyway—to madame's?"

Eliot Van Zandt laughed at his friend's droll raillery.

"Yes, I have just come from Madame Lorraine's," he said. "And I came away in a brown study, which accounts for my not seeing you. And you—you were on your way there?"

"Yes."

The word was spoken in a strange voice, and an odd little laugh followed it. Then the big, handsome Louisianian suddenly took hold of Van Zandt's arm, and said:

"Come, I have a great mind to make a confidant of you. Let us go and sit down yonder in the square, and smoke."

When they were seated, and puffing away at their cigars, he began:

"The fact is, I was in a brown study, too, Van Zandt, or I should not have run against you. I was going to Madame Lorraine's, and I found myself thinking soberly, seriously about the beautiful madame's wretched little slave and foot-ball, the Little Nobody you saw there last night."

"Yes," Van Zandt answered, with a quick start.

"By Heaven! it is a shame that the poor, pretty little vixen has no friends to rescue her from her tormentor!" exclaimed Carmontelle, vehemently. "For years this cruelty has been going on, and the girl, with her immortal soul, has been made a puppet by that charming, heartless woman. Would you believe it, the girl has never been given even the rudiments of an education? She is ignorant as a little savage, with not even a name. Yet I have seen this go on for years, in my careless fashion, without an effort to help the child. I can not understand what has roused me from my apathy, what has made me think of her at last—ah, mon Dieu!"

This exclamation was called forth by some sudden inward light. He went on, with a half-shamed laugh:

"What a speech I have made you, although I do not usually preach. Van Zandt, am I getting good, do you think, or—have I fallen in love with that Little Nobody?"

There was a minute's pause, and Eliot Van Zandt took the cigar from between his lips, and answered, quietly:

"In love, decidedly."

"Parbleu!"

After that hurried exclamation there was a moment's silence. Carmontelle broke it with an uneasy laugh.

"I am forty years old, but I suppose a man is never too old to make a fool of himself," he said. "I believe you are right, mon ami. I could not get the child out of my head last night. I never noticed how pretty she was before; and those lashes on her sweet, white shoulders. I longed to kiss them, as children say, to make them well."

"Poor child!" said Van Zandt; and then, without preamble, he blurted out the story of what had just happened.

Carmontelle listened with clinched hands and flashing eyes, the veins standing out on his forehead like whip-cords.

"The fiend!" he muttered. "Peste! he was always a sneak, always a villain at heart. More than once we have wished him well out of the club. Now he shall be lashed from the door, the double-dyed scoundrel! And she, the deceitful madame, she could plan this horrid deed! She is less than woman. She shall suffer, mark you, for her sin."

"But the little ma'amselle, Carmontelle? What shall we do to deliver her from her peril? Every passing moment brings her doom nearer, yet I can think of nothing. My brain seems dull and dazed."

"Do? Why, we shall take a carriage and bring her away 'over the garden wall,'" replied Carmontelle, lightly but emphatically.

"Very well; but—next?"

Carmontelle stared and repeated, in some bewilderment:

"Next?"

Eliot Van Zandt explained:

"I mean, what shall we do when we have brought her away? Where shall we find her a refuge and hiding-place from her treacherous enemies?" anxiously.

"You cold-blooded, long-headed Yankee! I never thought of that. I should have brought her away without thinking of the future. But you are right. It is a question that should be decided first. What, indeed, shall we do with the girl?"

And for a moment they looked at each other, in the starlight, almost helplessly.

Then Van Zandt said, questioningly:

"Perhaps you have relatives or friends with whom you could place her? I am not rich, but I could spare enough to educate this wronged child."

"I have not a relative in the world—not a friend I could trust; nothing but oceans of money, so you may keep yours. I'll spend some of mine in turning this little savage into a Christian."

"You will take her to school, then, right away?" Van Zandt went on, in his quiet, pertinacious way.

"Yes; and, by Jove, when she comes out, finished, I'll marry her, Van Zandt! I will, upon my word!"

"If she will have you," laconically.

"Peste! what a fellow you are, to throw cold water upon one. Perhaps you have designs upon her yourself?"

"Not in the face of your munificent intentions," carelessly.

"Very well; I shall consider her won, then, since you are too generous to enter the lists against me. What a magnificent beauty she will make when she has learned her three R's!" laughingly. "But, come; shall we not go at once to deliver our little friend from Castle Dangerous?"

They rose.

"I am glad I ran against you, Carmontelle. You have straightened out the snarl that tangled my mind. Now for our little stratagem. You will bring the carriage to the end of the square, while I go back to the garden and steal the bird away."

"Excellent!" said Carmontelle. "Oh, how they will rage when they find the bird has flown! To-morrow the club shall settle with Remond; for madame, she shall be ostracised. We shall desert her in a body. Who would have believed she would be so base?"

Van Zandt made no comment. He only said, as if struck by a sudden thought:

"The poor child will have no clothes fit to wear away. Can you find time, while getting a carriage, to buy a gray dress, a long ulster, and a hat and veil?"

"Of course. What a fellow you are to think of things! I should not have thought of such a thing; yet what school would have received her in that white slip—picturesque, but not much better than a ballet-dancer's skirts!" exclaimed the lively Southerner. "You are a trump, Van Zandt. Can you think of anything else as sensible?"

"Some fruit and bonbons to soothe her at school—that is all," lightly, as they parted, one to return to Mme. Lorraine's, the other to perfect the arrangements for checkmating Remond's nefarious design.

Carmontelle was full of enthusiasm over the romantic idea that had occurred so suddenly to his mind. A smile curled his lips, as he walked away, thinking of dark-eyed Little Nobody, and running over in his mind a score of feminine cognomens, with one of which he meant to endow the nameless girl.

"Constance, Marie, Helene, Angela, Therese, Maude, Norine, Eugenie, etc.," ran his thoughts; but Eliot Van Zandt's took a graver turn as he went back to the starlit garden and the girl who believed him her Heaven-sent deliverer from peril and danger.

"There is but little I can do; Carmontelle takes it all out of my hands," he mused. "Perhaps it is better so; he is rich, free."

A sigh that surprised himself, and he walked on a little faster until he reached the gate by which he had left the garden. Here he stopped, tapped softly, and waited.

But there was no reply to his knock, although he rapped again. Evidently she had gone into the house.

"I shall have to go in," he thought, shrinking from the encounter with the wicked madame and her partner in villainy, M. Remond.

Madame was at the piano, Remond turning the leaves of her music while she rendered a brilliant morceau. His hasty glance around the room did not find the little ma'amselle.

"She will be here presently," he decided, as he returned with what grace he could Mme. Lorraine's effusive greeting.

She was looking even lovelier than last night, in a costume of silvery silk that looked like the shimmer of moonlight on a lake. Her white throat rose from a mist of lace clasped by a diamond star. In her rich puffs of dark hair nestled white Niphetos roses shedding their delicate perfume about her as she moved with languid grace. The costume had been chosen for him. She had a fancy that it would appeal to his sense of beauty and purity more than her glowing robes of last night.

She was right. He started with surprise and pleasure at the dazzling sight, but the admiration was quickly succeeded by disgust.

"So beautiful, yet so wicked!" he said, to himself.

"You were singing. Pray go on," he said, forcing her back to the piano.

It would be easier to sit and listen than to take part in the conversation with his mind on the qui vive for the entrance of her he had come to save. He listened mechanically to the sentimental Italian chanson madame chose, but kept his eyes on the door, expecting every minute to see a petite white form enter the silken portals.

Remond saw the watchfulness, and scowled with quick malignity.

"Other eyes than mine watch for her coming," he thought.

The song went on. The minutes waned. Van Zandt furtively consulted his watch.

"Past ten. What if that wicked woman has already forced her to retire?" he thought, in alarm, and the minutes dragged like leaden weights.

"Oh, if I could but slip into the garden. Perhaps she is there still, fallen asleep like a child on the garden-seat."

Mme. Lorraine's high, sweet voice broke suddenly in upon his thoughts.

"Monsieur, you sing, I am sure. With those eyes it were useless to deny it. You will favor us?"

He was about to refuse brusquely, when a thought came to him. She would hear his voice, she would hasten to him, and the message of hope must be whispered quickly ere it was too late.

He saw Remond watching him with sarcastic eyes, and said, indifferently:

"I can sing a little from a habit of helping my sisters at home. And I belong to a glee club. If these scant recommendations please you, I will make an effort to alarm New Orleans with my voice."

"You need not decry your talents. I am sure you will charm us," she said; and Van Zandt dropped indolently upon the music-stool. His long, white fingers moved softly among the keys, evoking a tender accompaniment to one of Tennyson's sweetest love songs:

"'Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come hither, the dances are done.
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
Queen lily and rose in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
To the flowers, and be their sun.

"'There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near,"
And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear,"
And the lily whispers, "I wait."'"

The man and the woman looked at each other behind his back. Remond wore a significant scowl; madame a jealous sneer. It faded into a smile as he whirled around on the music-stool and faced her with a look of feigned adoration.

"Last night was so heavenly in the garden—let us go out again," he said, almost consumed by impatience.

Time was going fast, and it lacked little more than an hour to midnight. He chafed at the thought that Carmontelle was waiting with the carriage, impatient, and wondering at the strange delay.

"We will go into the garden," assented Mme. Lorraine. "Ah, you cold-looking Yankee, you can be as sentimental as a Southerner. Monsieur Remond, will you accompany us?"

"Pardon; I will go home. I have no fancy for love among the roses," with a covert sneer. "Madame, monsieur, bon soir."

He bowed and was gone. Van Zandt drew a long breath of dismay.

What if he should stumble upon Carmontelle and the carriage waiting at the end of the square under cover of the night?

It was impossible to follow. Mme. Lorraine's white hand clasping his arm, drew him out into the garden, with its sweet odors, its silence, and dew.

His heart leaped with expectancy.

"I shall find her here asleep among the flowers, forgetful of the dangers that encompass her young life."

He declared to Mme. Lorraine that he did not want to miss a single beauty of the romantic old garden, and dragged her remorselessly all over its length and breadth. Perhaps she guessed his intent, but she made no sign. She was bright, amiable, animated, all that a woman can be who hopes to charm a man.

He scarcely heeded her, so frantically was he looking everywhere for a crouching white form that he could not find. There came to him suddenly a horrified remembrance of her pathetic words:

"There is still the river!"

A bell somewhere in the distance chimed the half hour in silvery tones. Only thirty minutes more to midnight!

With some incoherent excuse he tore himself away from her, and dashing wildly out into the street, ran against Pierre Carmontelle for the second time that night.

"I have waited for hours, and was just coming to seek you. What does this mean?" he exclaimed, hoarsely.

A whispered explanation forced a smothered oath from his lips.

"Be calm. There is but one way left us. We will conceal ourselves near the door and wrest her from them when they bring her out," said Eliot Van Zandt.

[CHAPTER VII.]

But no place of concealment presented itself. The broad pavement showed a long, unbroken space of moonlit stone, save where one tall tree reared its stately height outside the curb-stone, and flung long, weird shadows across the front of madame's house.

Carmontelle looked up and down the street, and shook his head.

"I can see no hiding-place but the tree," he said.

"We need none better, unless you are too stout to scale it," Van Zandt answered, coolly, turning a questioning glance upon the rather corpulent form of his good-looking companion.

"You will see," laughed the Southerner, softly.

He glanced up and down the street, and seeing no one in sight, made a bound toward the tree, flung out his arms, and scaled it with admirable agility, finding a very comfortable seat among its low-growing branches. Van Zandt followed his example with boyish ease, and they were soon seated close to each other on the boughs of the big tree, almost as comfortable as if they had been lounging on the satin couches of madame's recherché salon. It was delightful up there among the cool green leaves, with the fresh wind blowing the perfume of madame's flowers into their faces.

"I feel like a boy again," said the journalist, gayly.

"Softly; we are opposite the windows of madame's chamber, I think," cautioned Carmontelle.

"She will not come up yet; she will wait in the salon for Remond. It is but a few minutes to midnight."

A step approached, and they held their breath in excessive caution.

It passed on—only a guardian of the peace pacing his beat serenely, his brass buttons shining in the moonlight.

Van Zandt whispered:

"I am not sure but we should have invoked the aid of the law in our trouble."

But Pierre Carmontelle shook his head.

"The law is too slow sometimes," he said. "We will place the little girl in some safe refuge first, then, if Madame Lorraine attempts to make trouble, we will resort to legal measures. I am not apprehensive of trouble on that score, however, for madame really has no legal right to the girl. Has she not declared scores of times that her maid died, and left the child upon her hands, and that, only for pity's sake, she would have sent her off to an orphan asylum?"

Steps and voices came along the pavement—two roystering lads, fresh from some festal scene, their steps unsteady with wine. They passed out of sight noisily recounting their triumph to each other. Then the echo of wheels in the distance, "low on the sand, loud on the stone."

"Are you armed?" whispered the Louisianian, nervously.

"No."

The cold steel of a pistol pressed his hand.

"Take that; I brought two," whispered Carmontelle. "We may need them. One of us must stand at bay, while the other seizes and bears away the girl."

"It shall be I. I will cover your flight," Van Zandt said, quietly.

Under his calm exterior was seething a tempest of wrath and indignation that made him clutch the weapon in a resolute grasp. He had pure and fair young sisters at home. The thought of them made him feel more strongly for madame's forlorn victim.

Their hearts leaped into their throats as Remond's close carriage dashed into sight, whirled up to madame's door, and stopped.

The door swung open, and Remond, muffled up to the ears, sprung out and went up to the house.

Its portals opened as if by magic, with a swish of silken robes in the hall. Madame herself had silently admitted her co-conspirator.

Most fortunately the back of the carriage was toward the tree, and the driver's attention was concentrated upon his restive horses.

Silently as shadows the two men slid down from their novel hiding-place, tiptoed across the pavement, and took up their grim station on either side the closed door.

Not a moment too soon!

At that very instant the door unclosed, and Remond appeared upon the threshold bearing in his arms a slight, inert figure wrapped in a long, dark cloak. Madame, still in her diamonds, roses, and silvery drapery, appeared behind him just in time to see a powerful form swoop down upon Remond, wrest his prize from him, and make off with wonderful celerity, considering the weight of the girlish form in his arms.

She fell back with a cry of dismay.

"Diable! Spies!"

Remond had recoiled on the instant with a fierce oath hissed in his beard—only an instant; then he dashed forward in mad pursuit, only to be tripped by an outstretched foot that flung him face downward on the hard pavement.

Scrambling up in hot haste, with the blood gushing from his nostrils, he found his way barred by Eliot Van Zandt.

"Back, villain! Your prey has escaped you!" the young man cried, sternly.

A black and bitter oath escaped Remond, and his trembling hand sought his belt.

He hissed savagely:

"Accursed spy! Your life shall answer for this!"

Then the long keen blade of a deadly knife flashed in the moonlight. Simultaneously there was the flash and report of a pistol. Both men fell at once to the ground, and at the same moment there was a swish and rustle of silvery silk, as beautiful Mme. Lorraine retreated from her threshold, slamming and locking her door upon the sight of the bloodshed of which she had been the cause.

"Let them kill each other, the fools, if they have no more sense," she muttered, scornfully, heartlessly, as she retired to her salon.

Remond's horses had been so frightened by the pistol-shot that they had run off with their alarmed driver, who had dropped the reins in the first moment of terror. There now remained only two of the six souls present a moment ago, Van Zandt and Remond lying silent where they had fallen under the cold, white light of the moonlight.

But presently the Frenchman struggled slowly up to his feet, and put his hand to his shoulder with a stifled curse.

"The dog has put a bullet through my shoulder. Never mind, we are quits, for I ran my knife through his heart," he muttered, hastening away from the scene of bloodshed.

But Eliot Van Zandt lay still where he had fallen, with his ghastly white face upturned to the sky, and the red blood pouring in a torrent from the gaping wound in his breast.

[CHAPTER VIII.]

Carmontelle made his way with what speed he could, hampered as he was by the heavy, unconscious form of the girl, to the carriage which he had in waiting at the end of the square. His speed was not great enough, however, to hinder him from hearing the sharp report of the pistol as it went off in Van Zandt's hand, and a slight tremor ran along his firm nerves.

"Somebody killed or wounded—and I pray it may be Remond, the dastardly villain," he thought. "I should not like for any harm to come to that noble young Van Zandt."

Then he paused while the driver sprung down from the box and opened the door for him. He laid his burden down upon a seat, sprung in, and then the door was closed.

"To the Convent of Le Bon Berger," he said.

"Oui, monsieur."

The man whipped up his horses, and they were off at a spanking pace.

A happy thought had occurred to Carmontelle. He had a friend who was the Mother Superior of the Convent of the Good Shepherd. To her pious care he would confide the poor, helpless lamb just rescued from the jaws of the hungry wolf.

When the carriage had started off, he drew the thick wrappings from the head of the unconscious girl and looked at her face. It was deathly white, and the long, thick fringe of her dark lashes lay heavily against her cheeks. Her young bosom heaved with slow, faint respiration, but he tried in vain to arouse her from the heavy stupor that held her in its chains.

Mme. Lorraine had been more clever than any one suspected. She had given the drug to her victim in a cup of tea, before she went out to the garden. Consequently the narcotic was already working in her veins when she flung herself at Van Zandt's feet, imploring his aid, and in a very few minutes after he had left her she fell into a heavy sleep upon the garden-seat, her last coherent thought being of him who had promised to save her from the perils that threatened her young life.

Carmontelle gazed with deep pity and strong emotion on the piquant and exquisitely lovely face, realizing that that beauty had well-nigh proved a fatal dower to the forlorn girl.

Deep, strong emotion stirred the man's heart as he gazed, and he vowed to himself that however friendless, nameless, and lowly born was the girl, she should never want a friend and protector again.

"I am rich and well-born, and she shall share all I have. When she leaves the Convent of Le Bon Berger, it shall be as Madame Carmontelle, my loved and honored wife, not the Little Nobody of to-night," he mused. "I will teach her to love me in the years while she remains a pupil at the convent."

In such thoughts as these the time passed quickly, although the convent was several miles from Esplanade Street, and in the suburbs of the city. At length the carriage paused before the dark conventual walls and towers, the driver sprung down from his seat and came to the door with the announcement:

"Le Bon Berger."

"Très bien. Wait."

He drew a memorandum-book from an inner pocket, and hastily penciled some lines upon a sheet of paper.

"Madame la Superieure,—Pardon this late intrusion, and for God's dear sake admit me to a brief interview. I have brought a poor, little helpless lamb to the Good Shepherd.

Pierre Carmontelle."

"Take that," he said, hastily folding it across. "Ring the bell, and present it to the janitor. Tell him Madame la Superieure must have it at once. Say I am waiting in distress and impatience."

The man crossed the wide pave and rang the gate bell. There was some little delay, then a stone slide slipped from its place in the high gate, and the janitor's cross, sleepy face appeared in the aperture. He was decidedly averse to receiving Carmontelle's orders. It was against the rules admitting visitors at this hour. The superior had retired.

Carmontelle sprung hastily from the carriage and approached him with a potent argument—perhaps a golden one—for he took the note and disappeared, while the Louisianian went back to his carriage to wait what seemed an inconceivably long space of time, restless and uneasy in the doubts that began to assail his mind.

"If she refuses," he thought, in terror, and his senses quailed at the thought. In all the wide city he could think of no home that would receive his charge if the convent turned her from its doors.

"Mon Dieu!" he began to mutter to himself, in fierce disquietude, when suddenly he heard the grating of a heavy key in a huge lock, the falling of bolts and bars, and the immense gate opened gingerly, affording a glimpse of the janitor's face and form against the background of a garden in riotous bloom, while beyond towered the massive convent walls.

"Entrez," the man said, civilly; and Carmontelle seized his still unconscious burden joyfully, and made haste to obey.

The janitor uttered an exclamation of surprise when he saw that strange burden, then he led the way, Carmontelle eagerly following, until they reached the convent door. It opened as if by an unseen power, and they went along a cold, dimly lighted hall to a little reception-room where two gentle, pale-faced nuns were waiting with the mother superior to receive the midnight visitor. She was a tall, graceful, sweet-faced woman as she stood between the two, her slender white hands moving restlessly along the beads of her rosary.

"My son," she uttered, in surprise, as he advanced and laid the still form of Little Nobody down upon a low sofa, drawing back the heavy cloak and showing what it hid—the fair young girl in the loose, white slip, and the wealth of ruddy, golden curls.

He looked up at her with a face strangely broken up from its usual calm.

"Madame, holy mother, I have brought you a pupil," he said, "and I have to confide a strange story to your keeping." He glanced at the sweet-faced, quiet nuns. "Perhaps it were better to speak to you alone?" he said, questioningly.

"No, you need not fear the presence of these gentle sisters of the Good Shepherd. No secrets ever pass beyond these walls," the mother superior answered, with grave, calm dignity.

[CHAPTER IX.]

Carmontelle saw the three nuns looking apprehensively at the pale, still face of his charge, and said, reassuringly:

"Do not be alarmed. It is not death, although it looks so much like it. The girl is only in a drugged sleep."

"But, monsieur—" began the mother superior, indignantly, when she was interrupted by his equally indignant disclaimer:

"It is none of my work. Wait until I tell you my story."

And he immediately related it without reserve. All three listened with eager interest.

"Now you know all," he said, at last, "and I will be perfectly frank with you regarding my intentions. I am rich, and have none to oppose my will. I wish to educate this unfortunate girl and make her my wife."

The superioress was gracious enough to say that it was a most laudable intention.

"You will aid me, then? You will receive her as a pupil, train and educate her in a manner befitting the position she will fill as my wife?" eagerly.

"Oui, monsieur," she replied, instantly; and he nearly overwhelmed her with thanks.

"I leave her in your care, then," he said, finally, as he pressed a check for a large amount into her hand. "Now I will not intrude upon you longer at this unseemly hour, but to-morrow I will call to see how she fares, and to make arrangements."

He paused a minute to anxiously scan the pale, sweet, sleeping face, and then hurried away, eager to learn how Van Zandt had fared in his valiant effort at holding his pursuer at bay. Springing into the carriage again, he gave the order:

"Back to Esplanade Street."

The mettlesome horses trotted off at a lively pace through the quiet, almost deserted streets, and in a short space of time they drew up in front of Mme. Lorraine's residence.

All was still and silent there. The front windows were closed and dark, and the clear moonlight shone upon the bare pavement—bare, where but a little while ago had lain the forms of the two vanquished contestants.

Carmontelle looked at the dark, silent front of the house for a moment in doubt and indecision. He felt intuitively that behind its dark portals was the knowledge he desired, that Mme. Lorraine could tell him how the contest had fared after his departure.

Anxiety conquered his reluctance to arouse the household at that late hour. He again left the carriage, and in crossing the pavement to the door, slipped and fell in a pool of blood yet wet and warm.

Horrified, he held up his hands with the dark fluid dripping from them.

"So, then, blood has been shed!" he exclaimed, and rang a furious peal on madame's door-bell.

"Whew! that was loud enough to wake the dead!" ejaculated the attentive driver from his box; but apparently Mme. Lorraine was a very sound sleeper indeed, for repeated ringings of the bell elicited no response.

In despair, Carmontelle was forced to go away, although quite satisfied in his own mind that Mme. Lorraine had heard, but refused to respond through malice prepense.

He drove next to Eliot Van Zandt's hotel, and met the startling information that the young man had not been in that night.

"Mon Dieu! what has become of the brave lad?" he ejaculated, in alarm; then, fiercely: "I will seek out Remond, and force the truth from him at the point of my sword!"

Fortunately for the now wearied horses, Remond's hotel was but a few squares further; but here he met the puzzling information that Remond had left an hour before, having given up his rooms, and declared his intention of not returning.

In the dim, strange light of the waning moon, Carmontelle grew strangely pale.

"There is some mystery at the bottom of all this!" he asserted.

But, baffled on every side in his efforts after information, he concluded to give up the quest until day; so was driven to his own lodgings in the pale glimmer of the dawn-light that now began to break over the quaint old city.

Weary and dispirited, with a vague presentiment of evil, he flung himself on his bed, and a heavy stupor stole over him, binding his faculties in a lethargic slumber from which he did not arouse until the new day began to wax toward its meridian.

[CHAPTER X.]

He had given his valet no instructions to arouse him; therefore the man let him sleep on uninterruptedly, thinking that his master had been "making a night of it," in the slang phrase that prevails among gay fellows. So, when he awakened and rang his bell, the midday sunshine followed François into the quiet chamber and elicited an exclamation of dismay.

"Diable! François, why did you not call me?"

"Monsieur gave me no instructions," smoothly.

"True; but you should have aroused me anyhow, you rascal!" irascibly. "Now, hurry up, and get me out of this as quick as possible!"

His toilet completed, he swallowed a cup of coffee, munched a few morsels of a roll, and was off—appetite failing in his eagerness to get at Van Zandt. On his way to the hotel he dropped in at the club. No information was found there. Neither Van Zandt nor Remond had been in the rooms since yesterday.

He hastened on to the journalist's modest hotel, only to be confronted with the news that Eliot had not yet returned. Since he had dined, at eight o'clock last evening, he had not been seen by any one in the house. His room had remained unoccupied since yesterday.

Carmontelle sickened and shuddered at thought of the blood before madame's door last night.

"It is plain that Van Zandt was the one who was wounded, since Remond was seen at his hotel last night after the accident. Great heavens! what mystery is here? Is he dead, the brave lad? and have they hidden his body to conceal the crime? I must find out the truth and avenge his death, poor boy!"

He flung himself again into his carriage and was driven to that beautiful fiend's—to the home of the woman who had so heartlessly plotted the ruin of the helpless, innocent girl.

She was at home, looking cool, fair, and graceful in a recherché morning-robe garnished with yards on yards of creamy laces and lavender ribbons. She was twirling some cards in her jeweled fingers.

"Ah, monsieur, I have cards to the reception at Trevor's next week. Are you going? Perhaps you have come to say that you will attend me there?"

The coquettish smile faded at the scowl he turned upon her face.

"Madame, where is Van Zandt?" he blurted out, brusquely.

It was no wonder she had been such a star upon the dramatic stage. Her puzzled air, the wondering glance of her bright, dark eyes, were perfect.

"Monsieur—Van Zandt!" she repeated, in gentle wonder. "How should I know? I assure you he has not been here since last night."

"Yes, I know," impatiently. "But what happened to him last night? Did Remond kill him here, at your door, where I found the pool of blood when I came back to look for him?"

Her eyes flashed.

"Ah, then it was you, monsieur, that carried off poor Remond's bride?" with a low laugh of amusement.

"Answer my question, if you please, Madame Lorraine," sternly. "Tell me—did Remond kill our young Yankee friend last night?"

Madame threw back her handsome head, and laughed heartlessly.

"Ma foi, how can I tell? When I saw the two fools were fighting desperately, I ran in, locked my door, and went to bed. Mon Dieu, I did not want to be a witness in a murder trial!"

"And you did not peep out of the window?" cynically.

"Ma foi, no! I was too frightened. I did not want to see or hear! I put my head under the bed-clothes, and went to sleep."

"Heartless woman! After you had caused all the mischief!" indignantly.

"I deny it!" cried Mme. Lorraine, artlessly, fixing her big, reproachful eyes on his face. "I can not understand what all this fuss is about. I did but arrange a marriage for my pretty ward, French-fashion, with Remond, rich, in love with her, and a splendid parti. But the little rebel pouted, flirted, and held him at bay till he was wild with love and jealousy. She was romantic. I proposed that he run off with her and win her heart by a coup d'état. The priest was ready. All would have gone well but for the cursed intermeddling of that sneaking Yankee. I hate him! What did he have to do with her that he should break off the match? Do you say Remond has killed him?"

She had poured it all out in voluble French, protestingly, and with an air of the completest innocence, but she met only a furious frown.

"Madame, your airs of innocence are quite thrown away," he replied. "Your treachery is known. You would have sold that poor girl to a life that was worse than death. Your bargain in the garden was overheard," sternly. "Do you know what you have brought upon your head, traitress? Social ostracism and complete disgrace! The Jockey Club that has upheld you by its notice so many years, will desert you in a body. We can not horsewhip you as we shall Remond, but we shall hold you up to the scorn of the world."

"Mercy, monsieur!" she gasped, faintly, dropped her face in her hands, and dissolved in tears.

He had expected that she would scorn him, defy him, but this softer mood confounded him. He could not bear a woman's tears.

He sat and watched her in silence a few minutes, fidgeting restlessly, then said, curtly:

"Come, come, it is too late for tears unless they are tears of repentance for your sin."

Madame flung up her hands with a tragic gesture.

"Mon Dieu, how cruelly I have been misunderstood! I do not deny the plot in the garden, but the listener surely did not hear all. Remond was to marry the girl, I swear it! Poor little motherless lamb! do you think I would have allowed any one to harm a hair of her head? Oh, you wrong me bitterly! You have been deceived, misled."

She flung herself with sudden, inimitable grace on her knees at his feet.

"Carmontelle, you should know me better than this!" she cried. "I swear to you it was only a harmless plot to make her Remond's wife. It would have been better for her to have a home and protector, I—I am so poor," weeping, "I have lost so heavily at play that there is a mortgage on my home, and I could not keep the girl much longer; I must retrench my expenses. Yet only for this I am to be ostracised, disgraced, held up to the scorn of my friends. Ah, you are cruel, unjust to me. Oh, spare me, spare me! Say nothing until you can prove these charges true."

What a consummate actress! what a clever liar she was! Doubt began to invade his mind. Had Van Zandt misunderstood her words?

"Madame Lorraine," he said, sternly, "get up from the floor and listen to me. I will give you the benefit of a doubt. I will try to believe that your infamous plot went no further than the trying to force that helpless child into a hated union. Even that was infamy enough. Talk not to me of your French marriages. I despise them. But I will say nothing to the world—yet. I will not wrong you until I make sure."

"Bless you, noble Carmontelle!" she cried, seizing his hand and pressing passionate kisses upon it. He drew it coldly away, and said, dryly:

"If you really feel grateful for my clemency, tell me what you know about Van Zandt and Remond. I can not find either one, and I fear that something terrible has happened to the noble young Bostonian."

She swore by all the saints that she knew nothing, had heard nothing since the pistol-shot last night.

"I was so frightened I did not wait to see who was shot. I just ran in and went to bed. I did not want to be a witness of anything so terrible!" she shuddered.

"You swear you are not deceiving me, madame?" sternly.

"I swear by all the saints," fervently.

"Then I must search farther for my missing friend," he said, sadly, as he turned to go.

She caught his arm eagerly.

"Now tell me what you have done with the little baggage who has caused all this trouble? By Heaven, Carmontelle, if harm come to my little daughter through you, I will hold you to account!"

"Daughter!" he echoed, bewilderly, and she answered, dauntlessly:

"Yes, my daughter. The secret is out at last, the secret of my shame! She was born before I met Lorraine. Her father was—well, no matter who, since he was a villain. Well, I put the child out to nurse, and made an honest marriage. Then the woman followed me with the child, and I had to invent a story to account for her to Lorraine. Now I am free to claim her, and you see that the law will support me in demanding her restoration to my care!"

They stood looking at each other silently a moment, then Carmontelle answered, angrily:

"Madame, I do not believe you. This is only one of a dozen different stories you have told to account for the possession of that child. Your last claim is made in order to support a claim for her return to you. The pretext will not avail you. The little ma'amselle is in safe hands, where she shall remain until she is trained and educated up to the standard necessary for my wife."

"Your wife?" she gasped, white with jealous fury.

"I have said it," he answered, coldly, and strode abruptly from the house.

Mme. Lorraine fell down for a moment on the sofa in furious hysterics. Carmontelle, her princely adorer, had scorned, defied her; Van Zandt knew her guilt and despised her; worst of all, the little scapegoat of her tempers, her beautiful slave, the hated Little Nobody, had escaped her clutches. Furies!

But suddenly she sprung up like a wild creature, tore open the door that Carmontelle had slammed together, and rushed after him. He was just entering his carriage when her frantic hand arrested him and drew him forcibly back.

"Come into the house; I must speak with you further. Do not shake your head," wildly. "It is a matter of life and death!"

He suffered her to drag him back into the salon. She turned her shining eyes upon his face with a half-maniacal gleam in them.

"The girl—had she awakened when you saw her last?" hoarsely.

"No," he replied.

She smote her forehead fiercely with one ringed white hand.

"My soul! I do not want to have murder on my hands. You must find Remond. I gave him the little vial with the antidote."

"The antidote?" he stammered, almost stupidly.

"Yes, the antidote. She is under the influence of a strange drug. I bought the two vials long ago from an old hag in the East as a curiosity, you see. One drug was to bring sleep, the other to wake at will. Without—" she paused, and her voice broke.

"Without—" he echoed, hoarsely; and in a frightened, guilty voice, she muttered:

"The one, without the other means—death!"

"Fiend!" he hissed, fiercely.

"No, no; do not blame me. I meant no ill. I gave Remond the antidote, to be used when they reached the end of their journey. How could I know you would take the girl from him and hide her? How could I know he would disappear? Find Remond quickly, or her death will lie at your door."

"You speak the truth?" he cried, wildly.

"Before God and the angels, monsieur!"

With a smothered oath he thrust her from him and rushed out again, leaped into the carriage, and gave his orders:

"Like the wind, to the detective agency."

It was two miles distant, and the panting horses were covered with foam when they set him down at his destination. Fortunately the familiar face of the most skillful detective in New Orleans looked at him in surprise from the pavement. He beckoned him into the vehicle.

In words as brief and comprehensive as possible he explained what he wanted done. He must find Remond at once—find him and bring him to the Convent of Le Bon Berger.

"A life hangs on his hands," he said, feverishly. "Tell him not to fail to bring with him the antidote he received last night."

"I will find him if he is in the city," the detective promised, ardently; and full of zeal, inspired not only by love for his profession, but genuine anxiety and grief over the startling case just confided to him, he sprung from the carriage to set about his task.

And Carmontelle, with his mind full of Little Nobody, gave the order again:

"To the convent!"

He was possessed by the most torturing anxiety over his little charge, and doubt over madame's startling assertion.

"Horrible! horrible! What possessed her to use a drug so deadly?" he thought, wildly. "Oh, it can not be true! I shall find her awake and waiting for me, the poor lamb! Madame Lorraine only invented that story to torture me."

He spoke feverishly to the driver:

"Faster, faster!"

The man replied, in a conciliatory tone:

"Monsieur, I dare not. I should be arrested for fast driving, and your speed would be hindered, not helped, by such a course."

He knew that it was true, and with a groan sunk back in his seat and resigned himself with what patience he could to the moderate pace of the horses. It seemed hours, although it was but thirty minutes, before they drew up again before the dark, grim building where he had left his charge the night before.

The janitor admitted him without any parley this time; but Carmontelle was so eager that he did not notice the solemn, sympathetic look with which the man regarded him. He rushed without delay to the presence of the mother superior.

When she saw him, her countenance expressed the greatest dismay. She crossed herself piously and ejaculated, sorrowfully:

"Oh, monsieur, monsieur, you have come at last!"

"Madame, holy mother!" he cried, agitatedly, and paused, unable to proceed further. Something in her face and voice filled him with dread.

"Oh, my son!" she uttered, sorrowfully, and speech, too, seemed to fail her. She regarded him in a pathetic silence mixed with deep pity.

He made a great effort to speak, to overcome the horror that bound him hand and foot. A terrible fear was upon him. What if she had not wakened yet?

With that awful thought, he gasped and spoke:

"Where is she?"

"Oh, mon Dieu! oh, holy Mother of Jesus, comfort him!" cried the good nun, piously. She advanced and touched him compassionately. "God help you, my poor son. She—she—has not awakened—yet."

He turned his pale, frightened face toward her.

"She sleeps?" he questioned, eagerly; and with a holy compassion in her trembling voice, she replied:

"Yes, my son, she sleeps—in Jesus."

"Dead?" he almost shrieked, and she answered, solemnly:

"Yes."

She thought he was about to faint, his face grew so pale and his form reeled so unsteadily; but he threw out one hand and caught the back of a chair to sustain himself, while a hollow groan came from his lips:

"Too late!"

With tears in her eyes, the good nun continued:

"The little girl never awakened from the deep sleep in which you brought her here. We made every effort to arouse her, but all in vain. She sunk deeper and deeper into lethargy, her breathing growing fainter and fainter, and at last it ceased altogether."

"When?" he questioned, huskily.

"Three hours ago," she replied.

If it had not been for her sacred presence, Carmontelle would have broken into passionate execrations of the wicked woman who had caused the death of that sweet young girl. As it was, he stood before her dazed and silent, almost stunned by the calamities that had befallen him since last night.

Van Zandt had mysteriously disappeared, and Little Nobody was dead. The one, he feared and dreaded, had been murdered by Remond in his fury; the other lay dead, the victim of Mme. Lorraine's cruel vengeance.

"Come," said the nun, breaking in on his bitter thoughts; "she lies in the chapel. You will like to look at her, monsieur."

He followed her silently, and the low, monotonous sound of the chant for the dead came to his ears like a knell as they went on along the narrow hall to the darkened chapel, where the weeping nuns lay prostrate before the altar, mumbling over the prayers for the dead, and an old, white-haired priest in flowing robes bent over his book. Carmontelle saw none of these. He had eyes for nothing but that black-draped coffin before the altar, with wax-candles burning at head and foot, shedding a pale, sepulchral light on that fair young face and form that such a little while ago had been full of life, and health, and vigor.

He stood like one turned to stone—speechless, breathless—gazing at that exquisitely lovely face, so faultlessly molded, and so beautiful even in the strange pallor of death, with the dark lashes lying so heavily against the cheeks and the lips closed in such a strange, sweet calm.

His heart swelled with love, and grief, and pity. Poor child! she had had such a strange, desolate life, and she had died without a name and without a friend, save for him who stood beside her now, his face pale and moved, as he looked upon her lying like a broken lily in her coffin, with the strange, weird light sifting through the stained-glass windows on her calm face, and the monotonous chants and prayers making a solemn murmur through the vaulted chapel.

"Is it death or heavy sleep?" he asked himself, with a sudden throb of hope; and he touched reverently the little hands that were crossed over a white lily the nuns had lovingly placed there. Alas! they were icy cold! His hope fled. "Too late! too late! If they find Remond, it will be all in vain," he muttered, and the mother superior looked at him inquiringly.

Impulsively he told her all, and the nuns, at their prayers, murmured aves and paters more softly, that they might listen; the old priest, with his head bent over his book, lost not a word. It was a romance from that wicked outer world from which the convent walls shut them in, a breath of life and passion from the "bewildering masquerade" of existence, where

"Strangers walk as friends,
And friends as strangers;
Where whispers overheard betray false hearts,
And through the mazes of the crowd we chase
Some form of loveliness that smiles and beckons,
And cheats us with fair words, only to leave us
A mockery and a jest; maddened—confused—
Not knowing friend from foe!"

The mother superior gazed with dilated eyes as he poured out the moving story, clasped her long, white hands excitedly, and shuddered with horror.

"Ah, mon Dieu! the wicked man! the cruel, heartless woman!" she exclaimed. "Shall they not answer for this crime?"

"Ay, before Heaven, they shall!" Pierre Carmontelle vowed passionately, with his warm, living hand pressed upon the chill, pulseless one of the nameless dead girl; and in the years to come he kept that impulsive vow made there in the presence of the living and the dead.

[CHAPTER XI.]

To return to Mme. Lorraine the night when Eliot Van Zandt lay like one dead before her door in a pool of his own blood, deserted by the brutal Remond, who had left him for dead upon the pavement.

She had peeped from the window as Carmontelle had charged her with doing, although she had denied the accusation, and she had beheld all that passed. If she had not conceived a passion for Van Zandt, he might have perished, for all she would have cared; but something of womanly softness stole into her heart as she gazed, and she murmured:

"Can he be dead, or only in a deadly swoon? What if I go and find out?"

Glancing up and down the street to make sure that no one was in sight, she slipped out and knelt down by the prostrate form. Pushing back his coat and vest, she laid her hand over his heart.

"There is some faint pulse. He lives, he lives!" she murmured, joyfully. "Now, now is my chance to act the good Samaritan. I will take him into my house, nurse him, tend him, and gratitude may win for me that which beauty and fascination failed to conquer."

She hastily summoned a confidential servant, a woman who had been in her employ many years, and the repository of many strange secrets. Together they managed to convey the wounded, unconscious man into the house, although the domestic expostulated with every breath.

"Hold your tongue, Mima. It is none of your business. You have only to obey my orders," madame returned, coolly. "The underground chamber, please. His presence is to be kept a secret. You and I will have the care of him—you are quite skillful enough, after your experience as a hospital nurse during the war, to attend his wound. He will be hidden here, while to the world he will have mysteriously disappeared."

They laid him down on a couch in the wide hall, and Mima took a lamp and went out.

Soon she returned, and stood before her mistress, huge, and tall, and dark, with a malignant scowl on her homely foreign face.

"Madame, your strange guest-chamber is ready," she said, with curt sarcasm. "But this heavy body—how shall we convey it down the stairs?"

"You are big and strong enough," Mme. Lorraine replied, coolly. "You may go in front and carry his body; I will follow with his pretty head in my arms."

And so, as if the fate that had stricken him down into seeming death had not been dark enough, he was borne, an unconscious prisoner, into an underground chamber beneath Mme. Lorraine's house—a luxurious chamber, richly furnished, but of whose presence no one was aware save herself and this servant, for it was entered by a door cleverly concealed among the oak panelings of the hall. The light of day never entered this secret chamber. It was illumined by a swinging-lamp, and the odor of dried rose leaves from a jar of pot-pourri in one corner pleasantly pervaded the air, dispelling some of the mustiness and closeness inseparable from its underground situation.

They laid Van Zandt down upon a soft white bed, and Mme. Lorraine said, coolly:

"Now, Mima, you may examine into the extent of his wound."

The large, masculine-looking woman went to work in quite a professional way on her unconscious patient, and in a short time she looked around and said, to the great relief of her mistress:

"It is an ugly wound, very near his heart, but not necessarily a dangerous one, unless a fever sets in. He has fainted from loss of blood, and I will dress the wound before I attempt to revive him. You may go upstairs, for I see you growing pale already at the sight of blood, and I don't want you here fainting on my hands."

"Thank you, Mima," said Mme. Lorraine, almost meekly; for one of her weaknesses, which she shared in common with most women, was that the sight of blood always made her very sick and faint.

She staggered out of the close room, toiled feebly up the stairs, and drank two glasses of wine to steady her trembling nerves; then she extinguished the lights in the house, and retired to her bed. She was still awake when Carmontelle returned in quest of Eliot Van Zandt, and she laughed in her sleeve at his furious, ineffectual peals at the bell.

Stealing to the window, she drew back a fold of the curtain and peered down at him, chuckling softly when she saw him take his angry departure. Then she returned to her silken couch, and slept soundly for hours.

The sun was high in the heavens when Mima's rough, impatient hand shook her broad awake without ceremony.

"Are you going to sleep all day?" she demanded. "You wouldn't if you knew what had happened. The little one's gone. I can't find her in the house or the grounds, and her bed ain't been slept in all night."

She gazed suspiciously into madame's startled face, which was not so handsome now with the cosmetics washed from it, and that frown wrinkling her brow. She repeated Mima's word in apparently stupid amaze:

"Gone!"

"Yes, gone! Don't you know anything about it? Ain't you had a hand in it?"

Mme. Lorraine, sitting up in bed in her night-robe of soft white linen, burst out, indignantly:

"Look here, Mima, don't make a fool of yourself. If the girl's gone, it's none of my work. She threatened, the last time I beat her, that she would run away, and I suppose she's kept her word. I've noticed that some of the men that come here were sweet on her, and she's gone with one of them, no doubt."

Mima stood like one petrified, looking at her, when she suddenly burst out again:

"Oh, dear! perhaps she has taken Selim! Run, Mima, to the stables. Oh, the little wretch!—if she dared—"

Mima interrupted, harshly:

"She has not taken your idol. I knew she was in the habit of stealing him out for a wild canter sometimes, and I ran to the stables when I missed her. Selim was there all right, and the ponies, too."

"Then she has gone off with some of the men; she has eloped, the little vixen, and may joy go with her! It is a good riddance of bad rubbish," madame cried, in such violent indignation that the servant's suspicions were disarmed. Seeing the impression she had made, the wily ex-actress went on: "I dare say that was the cause of the shooting last night. I was awakened by the report of a pistol, and jumped out of bed and ran to the window. I saw a carriage in front of my door, and two men scuffling on the pavement. Suddenly one fell to the ground; the other jumped into the carriage and drove rapidly away. No doubt the wicked little baggage was in the vehicle, and the fight was over her. Let her go, the little nobody. I shall make no effort to find her. But aren't you going to give me my chocolate, when I'm so weak I can scarcely speak?" pausing in her voluble tirade, and fixing a glance of reproach on the servant's dark, stolid face.

Mima shrugged her broad shoulders sarcastically and retired, and madame sprung out of bed, thrust her feet into satin slippers, and huddled on an elaborate robe de chambre.

"I suppose I shall have to dress myself now, having deprived myself of my little maid's services to gratify my desire for revenge," she muttered, half regretfully. "Ciel! but she had deft fingers and a correct taste. I can not replace her services by another, for the secrets of this old house are not to be trusted to a stranger. Well, I am a thousand dollars the richer, although Remond let the prize slip through his fingers after he had paid the price. And what a fortune it was that cast Van Zandt into my hands! I have fallen in love with the beautiful boy. It is really love, not the penchant I have entertained for a score of others. Ah!" She paused in her soliloquy, for Mima entered with a tray on which glistened the gold and silver of a costly breakfast service, spread with delicate edibles. "Your patient, Mima, how is he?" she queried, anxiously.

"He is doing well, and thinks he is in a hospital," said the woman. "It is best to humor him in that delusion for several days; for if he were to find out the truth now, he would fret and chafe, and perhaps bring on the fever I am anxious to avoid. So, madame, you would do well to stay out of the sick-room until he is well enough to bear the news that he is a prisoner of love," sarcastically.

[CHAPTER XII.]

Carmontelle stood for many minutes gazing like one dazed at the still and lovely features of the nameless dead girl. He was stunned, as it were, by the magnitude of this misfortune, and could only murmur over and over in accents of pity and despair combined:

"Too late, too late, too late!"

At length he too flung himself down before the altar with bowed head, although no prayers escaped his lips, for the stupor of despair was upon him. She was dead, poor unfortunate Little Nobody, and there was naught to pray for now.

There the detective found him, two hours later, when he came with news—news at once good and bad.

"I found Remond," he said. "He was about leaving the city by the steamer 'Ellen Bayne.' As he was about crossing the plank, I collared him and demanded the antidote. He was startled at first, and glared at me fiercely, then suddenly assumed a calmness that looked so much like acquiescence that I was completely deceived. He put his hand into his breast-pocket, and drew out a small vial of colorless liquid. I thought he was going to give it to me, and, thrown off my guard by his apparent coolness, released him and stretched out my hand. The cunning villain took instant advantage of my belief; he sprung away from me across the gang-plank, which was instantly drawn in, as the steamer was leaving the wharf. Standing on the deck, he looked at me with the leer of a fiend and immediately flung the vial into the river."

"The fiend!" Carmontelle said, hoarsely. "But it matters not. She is already dead."

And he led the dismayed and disappointed detective to the chapel, and showed him the silent sleeper there, with the cool white lilies on her breast.

"How beautiful, how unfortunate!" murmured the kind-hearted detective, in reverential awe. His profession had made him familiar with all sorts of tragedies and sorrows, but this one seemed to him as sad and pathetic as any he had ever encountered. He looked with deep sympathy upon the man beside him to whom the girl's death was such a crushing blow, but words failed him. He could only look his silent and sincere sympathy.

Suddenly there recurred to Carmontelle the remembrance of Eliot Van Zandt, whose fate was still wrapped in mystery.

"Come, we can do no good here now," he said, mournfully. "The fiends have done their work too well. We must try to get at the bottom of the mystery that enshrouds the fate of my poor friend."

After promising the mother superior to return and attend to the funeral obsequies of the dead girl, he went away, taking the detective with him to assist in the inquiry for the young journalist.

It did not seem possible that they could fail in this search, but though the anxious quest was kept up for many days and nights, not a single clew rewarded their efforts. Eliot Van Zandt had disappeared as completely as though an earthquake had opened and swallowed him into the bosom of old mother earth.

The detective could form but one conclusion, which he reluctantly imparted to his employer.

"The young man was most probably murdered that night, and his corpse flung into the river, but no proofs will ever be found implicating Remond as the murderer. Nor is it likely that the Frenchman will ever turn up again in New Orleans. Fearful of detection, he will go abroad and plunge into new crimes befitting his evil nature, and the disappearance of poor Van Zandt will most likely remain forever upon the terrible list of unexplained disappearance of human beings."

Days came and went, and it seemed as if he had uttered a true prophecy.

In the meantime, a tomb in the convent cemetery had received to its cold embrace the shrouded form of Mme. Lorraine's beautiful victim, and the madame herself had been apprised of the fact by a brief and bitter note from Pierre Carmontelle.

"The victim of your malice is dead and in her untimely grave," he wrote. "Remond has fled the city, and the Jockey Club has been told the secret of your guilt and his. They are wild with rage, but they spare you yet until they can make sure of your guilt, and bring your crime home to you. In the meantime, I tell you frankly that you are under constant espionage, and the task of my life is to avenge the death of poor little ma'amselle upon you and that cowardly Frenchman. Look well to yourself, for enemies encompass you and punishment awaits you."

Madame grew pale beneath her rouge, and twisted the angry note nervously in her jeweled fingers.

"A frank enemy!" she muttered. "He gives me fair warning. Like the deadly serpent, he gives forth his venomous hiss before he stings. He is very kind. Forewarned is forearmed, they say."

She reread it with a nervous contraction of her brows.

"So the little one is dead! I did not intend it, but—it is better so. Fate has removed an incumbrance from my path. Now for a call upon my guest, to electrify him with my news. Mima says he is fast recovering, and that I may venture upon a visit."

She went to her dressing-room and donned a street costume of olive cashmere and silk, with bonnet and gloves and all the paraphernalia of walking costume. Then, with a choice bunch of flowers culled from her garden, she let herself through the secret entrance to the cellar chamber, and preceded by the frowning servant, was ushered into the presence of Eliot Van Zandt.

He lay, pale and handsome and restless, among the white pillows in the luxurious room. The lamp that burned night and day shed a soft, roseate glow over everything, and brightened somewhat the pallid cast of his countenance.

"Ah, Monsieur Van Zandt, my poor, dear Yankee friend, the cruel doctors and nurses have permitted me to call on you at last! And how do you find yourself this evening, mon ami?" she cried, fluttering up to his bedside, all smiles and sweet solicitude.

His dark-gray eyes opened wide with surprise and displeasure.

"Madame Lorraine!" he ejaculated, angrily, but she pretended not to understand the surprise and anger.

"Yes, it is I," she said, sweetly. "Did you think you were deserted by all your friends? But it was the cruel doctors in the hospital; they would admit no one until you were out of danger. I came every day and begged until they gave me leave to see you. Ah, mon ami, I have suffered such anxiety for your sake!" with uplifted eyes and pensive air. "But, thank the good God, you are restored to me."

The dark-gray eyes flashed with resentment, and a warm flush crept up to the young man's pale brow. He waved her away indignantly.

"Madame Lorraine, your hypocrisy is intolerable!" he exclaimed, hotly. "Leave me. Your call is in the worst of taste, and most undesirable."

With impetuous grace, she flung herself down on her knees beside him, surprise, dismay, and wounded love expressed eloquently on her mobile face.

"Ah, mon ami, what have I done to receive this repulse? I come to you in friendship and regard, and you order me away! Good nurse"—turning her head around for a moment to scornful Mima—"is it that your patient is delirious yet, that he thus upbraids his truest friend?"

"Get up from your knees, Madame Lorraine; you can not deceive me by your artful professions," Van Zandt cried, sternly; and looking wondrously grand and handsome in his anger, although he could scarcely lift his blonde head from the pillow. "I am not delirious; my mind is perfectly clear, and, in proof of it, listen: I was in your garden that night, and heard your nefarious plotting with Remond for the ruin of that poor young girl. She heard, too, and, distracted with terror, begged me to save her. It was I who brought Carmontelle to the rescue, while I held at bay the villain Remond. Now you understand why I loathe the sight of you—why I wish you to go out from my presence, never to enter it again."

She wept and protested, as she had done with Carmontelle, that it was all a cruel mistake. She had but made a match, French-fashion, for her ward. Remond was pledged to marry her that night. She did not find him credulous, as she had hoped. He smiled in scorn, and reiterated his wish that she should leave the room.

"Very well," she said, bitterly, "I am going, but not before I tell the news I brought; your officious intermeddling was fatal to the girl you pretended to save—it was the cause of her death."

"Death!" he echoed; and the fair, stately head fell back among the pillows, the lids drooped over his eyes. Mima believed he was about to swoon, and hastily brought restoratives.

"You should have held your cursed tongue!" she muttered, in an audible aside to her mistress; but Mme. Lorraine did not reply. She was watching that deathly pale face that looked up at her so eagerly as Van Zandt whispered, faintly:

"Dead! Oh, you do but jest! It can not be!"

"It is no jest. It is the truth. Do you want to hear how it came about? Remond had two subtle Eastern drugs, the one to induce heavy sleep, the other to awaken her at his will. Well, you and Carmontelle interfered, and so Remond ran away with the second drug, and—she died in her sleep."

"No, no!" he cried, almost imploringly.

"Ah, you regret your work when too late!" madame cried, triumphantly. "It is sad, is it not? But it is true as Heaven. Barely an hour ago I received a note from him, to say that she was dead and buried, the poor little wretch!"

"It is your fiendish work!" he said, bitterly. "May Heaven punish you! Ah, the poor innocent little ma'amselle, it was hard for her to go like that. But—better death than dishonor!"

He put his white hand up before his face, and a long, deep, shuddering sigh shook him from head to foot. Mima shook her mistress roughly by the shoulder and pointed to the door that led up the stairs to the hidden entrance.

"Go!" she whispered, harshly. "I don't know what prompted you to this devil's work. You must have wanted to kill him. I don't know how this will result now. Go, and take your hateful face out of his sight!"

Madame flung down her roses with a whimper, and trailed her rich robes from the room in a passion of disappointed love and hope.

"He loved her—like the rest!" she muttered, fiercely. "I wish she had died before he ever saw her. But I swear I will win him yet, or—he shall never see the light of day again!"

[CHAPTER XIII.]

Van Zandt lay for a long time with his face hidden in his hands, long, labored sighs shaking his manly form, feeling as if a nightmare of horror had fastened itself upon him. It had been bad enough to lie here, bound hand and foot by the pain of his severe wound, and chafing fiercely against his misfortune, but with the inward comfort of the knowledge that by his bravery he had saved a girl, Little Nobody though she was, from a cruel fate; but—now!

Now, at the sudden and cruel news Mme. Lorraine had maliciously brought, his heart almost ceased its beating, so awful was the shock.

Dead, gone out of life in her maiden bloom, so beautiful, so innocent and ignorant, wronged irretrievably by a woman without a heart—a handsome creature, wicked enough to sell a young, immortal soul to ruin for a handful of sordid gold! Bitter, sorrowful, indignant were his meditations while he lay there, with his hand before his face, watched furtively by the big, ugly Mima, who, with all her rough ways, was a skillful and tender nurse, having spent four years of her life caring for wounded soldiers in an army hospital.

She moved nearer to him at last, and said, uneasily:

"Best not to take it so hard, sir. The girl's gone to a better place than this wicked world, where she never saw one happy day. You'll make yourself worse, taking on like this, and it can't do any good to the dead, so cheer up and think of getting well as fast as you can, and out of this lonesome place."

He looked curiously at the hard, homely face as she spoke, for she had been shy and taciturn heretofore, wasting few words upon her patient. She had told him that he was in a private hospital, and he had not doubted the assertion, although, as days passed by, it seemed strange to him that he saw no face but hers about him. Another thing that puzzled him was, that it seemed always night in his room—the curtains drawn and the lamp burning. When he spoke of this to Mima, she answered abruptly that he slept all day and lay awake all night.

"And I never see the doctor when he comes to visit me," he added.

"You are always asleep when he pays his midday visit," she replied.

In the languor and pain of his illness he accepted all her statements in good faith, although chafing against his forced detention, and wondering what his publishers and his home folks would think of his strange silence. He had resolved only this morning that he would ask Carmontelle to write to them for him to say that he was sick—not wounded—only sick.

Now he looked fixedly at his strange, grim nurse, and said, sternly:

"Never admit that woman, that fiend rather, into my presence again. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir," Mima replied, soothingly; and he continued, anxiously:

"Now, tell me, has any one called to see me since I was brought to this hospital? I mean, except that woman, Madame Lorraine?"

"Lord, yes, sir; several gentlemen that said they was from the Jockey Club, and friends of yours. But the doctor's orders was strict not to admit anybody."

"How came Madame Lorraine to get admittance, then?" with a very black frown.

"Lord, sir, she wheedled the doctor with her pretty face!"

He frowned again, and said, peremptorily:

"When the doctor comes in again, you must awaken me if I am asleep. I must speak to him."

"Yes, sir," meekly.

"And if the gentlemen from the club come again, say to the doctor that they must be admitted. I am quite well enough to receive my friends, and I must get some one to write home for me. Will you do as I tell you?" looking at her with contracted brows, and a dark-red flush mounting into his cheek that alarmed her, experienced nurse that she was.

"Yes, yes, my dear sir, I will do just as you say," she replied, eager to pacify him, for she saw that what she had been dreading all the time had come to pass, through the imprudence of Mme. Lorraine—her patient had been driven by excitement into a high fever.

[CHAPTER XIV.]

In the meantime, a strange event had taken place at the Convent of Le Bon Berger, through the curiosity of the old priest, who, while bending over his book in the chapel, had overheard Carmontelle's story of the mysterious drug and its strange antidote. Although outwardly absorbed in his devotions, he had listened with an excited gleam in his dim old eyes, and once had half started forward to speak, but checked himself quickly, and remained quiescent during the time that elapsed before Carmontelle and the praying nuns took their departure from the chapel.

When all were gone, and there remained only himself and that still form in the black-draped coffin, he started eagerly forward and stood in excited silence gazing at the beautiful face of the dead girl. Once he lifted his old, wrinkled hand and pressed hers tenderly, then withdrew it, shuddering at that mortal coldness.

It was no wonder that the old priest had been excited by the story of Carmontelle, for years ago he had been an enthusiastic traveler in Eastern lands, and an old witch—or sorceress, as she was called there—had given him two drugs to which she ascribed the mysterious properties possessed by those of which Carmontelle had spoken. He had kept them always, certainly with no intention of ever testing the strange power claimed for them, but only because they were part and parcel of the box of curiosities he had brought with him from that fascinating tour. To-day the two vials lay safely in the box, wrapped in a bit of yellow parchment on which, in a strange tongue, were inscribed the directions for their use.

It flashed over him that the hour had come when the gift of the old hag, at whose strange leer he had shrunk and shuddered, was to be instrumental in saving a human life.

But he was old and wise, and he knew that life is not always a blessing; that often and often it is but the bearing of a heavy cross, with lagging steps and weary heart, to a far Golgotha. In the dim confessional men and women, and even the young and tender, had poured their griefs and their sins into his compassionate hearing, and many had waited for death with infinite yearning, while some—and he trembled and crossed himself at the sad remembrance—had gone mad over wrong and ruth, and in despair had cut the Gordian knot of life. It was of all this he had thought when he had restrained his impulse to speak to Carmontelle; it was of this he was thinking now, as he stood there, old and gray and holy, by the side of that beautiful bud of life in the coffin.

He was, as it were, weighing entity and non-entity in careful, metaphorical scales. He was solemnly asking himself, "Which is better—life or death?"

From the saints and angels in that bright world beyond, where his pious thoughts continually rested, seemed to come a low, eager answer:

"Death!"

He looked again, with agonized doubt, at that fair, lovely face, so innocent in its deep repose.

The mother superior had told him that the girl, had she lived, was destined to be the bride of Carmontelle.

"I know the man—rich, generous, and worldly. As his wife, she will be a society queen. Her idols will be wealth and pleasure. She will be gay and heartless, forgetful of all holy things, living only for this world. Better, far better, the bride of Heaven."

And crossing himself again, with a muttered prayer he went out of the little chapel, where presently the pale-faced nuns came again, muttering their pious aves for the dead.

That night in his cell, impelled by some irresistible force within himself, he took out the small vial from the curiosity-box, and read the strangely lettered parchment, for he was an earnest student, and versed in Oriental lore.

Great drops of dew beaded his temples as he spelled out the meaning of the parchment; and no wonder, for he read there that, although one lay as dead for three days, a few drops of the antidote poured between the lips would break that deathly sleep and restore life; but after those wondrous three days the drug could be of no avail—death must surely ensue.

In the cold and cheerless cell the old priest shivered as with a chill.

"What an awful responsibility lies upon me!" he muttered. "It is for me to decide whether to give her back to Carmontelle and the world, to be spoiled by its vanities, or leave her soul, now pure and unspotted, free to enter heaven."

After an hour of painful meditation he put away the mysterious drug and spent the night upon his knees on the cold stone floor of the cell, calling on all the saints to uphold him in his pious resolve to save the soul of the lovely girl by the sacrifice of her life.

And the next afternoon, in a shaken voice and a holy resolve written on his ashen features, he read the long Latin prayers for the dead to the assembled nuns and to Carmontelle among them, and saw the form of poor Little Nobody consigned to the grim vault in the convent cemetery.

Two days and a night had thus passed while the girl lay in that death-like trance. A few hours more and the prisoned soul would be separated from the body, and the story of her brief life be ended.

But when the shades of night again fell on the convent walls, a revulsion of feeling brought remorse to the soul of the old priest. He was haunted by the thought of the living girl prisoned in the vault among the dead. In the solitude of his cell that night a strange unrest grew upon him, and evil spirits seemed to people the gloom.

He started up in terror from his knees, the great drops of sweat pouring over his face.

"Yes, yes, it is murder!" he uttered, fearfully. "Heaven put the means of saving her in my hands, and I was too blind to understand. But I will atone, I will atone!"

A sudden thought came to him, and he hurriedly sought a brother priest and the mother superior. To them, in deep humility, he confessed his error.

"I was deceived by tempting devils, but I see my mistake in time to correct it," he said, humbly. "Several hours yet remain of the time, and I will restore her to life, by the aid of Heaven and this mysterious drug, and her return to life must be a secret."

They went with him secretly to the dark vault. They took from the coffin that unconscious form and bore it in their arms to a secluded chamber. There they poured between the pale, sealed lips a few drops of the mysterious drug, and kept anxious vigil all night over her bedside.

In a few hours they began to reap the reward of their solicitude. The appearance of the girl's face grew less death-like, a delicate moisture appeared on her skin, a faint color in her lips, and gradually a barely perceptible respiration became apparent. The drug had done its restorative work perfectly.

Down on his knees went the anxious old priest, and he thanked Heaven for the life he had saved.

When the morning light began to gild the convent spire, the dark eyes opened slowly upon the face of the mother superior, who was watching intently for this sign of life. The priests had retired, and they were quite alone. Tears of relief sparkled into the eyes of the good nun.

"Dear child, you are awake at last!" she exclaimed, gladly; but the girl made no reply. Her lids had closed again, and she had fallen into a quiet, natural sleep that lasted until the chiming of the vesper bells.

She awoke to find her slumber guarded by another nun, who had taken the place of the good mother. When the dark, puzzled eyes wandered around the room, she chirped sweetly:

"Oh, my dear, you have slept so long, you must be very, very hungry. I will bring you some food."

She came back presently with some light, nutritious broth in a bowl, and fed the girl gently from a tea-spoon. She swallowed languidly, and a few mouthfuls sufficed her appetite. Then she looked at the pleasant-faced nun, and said, languidly:

"Good sister, I do not understand. Just now I was with Monsieur Van Zandt. He was wounded. Oh, how pale he was!" shivering. "Another minute, and I am here. How is it, and where is he?"

The old priest had entered noiselessly, and the low voice was distinctly audible to his ears. He shuddered.

He had just read in a paper of the mysterious disappearance of Eliot Van Zandt, who was supposed to have been murdered, and his body flung into the lake or the river. Hence the girl's strange words struck coldly on his senses. He thought:

"Her soul has been parted from the body in that strange trance, and has taken cognizance of the man vainly sought for by friends and detectives. What if she could tell where he is hidden!"

Muttering a prayer for the girl, he came up to the bedside.

"Bless you, my daughter," he said, soothingly. "And so you have seen Eliot Van Zandt? Does he yet live?"

She looked at him gently and with surprise. Perhaps, in the strange experiences of her trance, she was inured to surprises.

"Holy father," she murmured, reverentially, then, gently. "I have seen him. He is not dead. He is not going to die. But he is very ill; he is dangerously wounded."

The little nun chirped an "oh!" of vivacious wonder, but the priest silenced her by a warning glance.

"Where is he? Where is Monsieur Van Zandt, my daughter?" he questioned, eagerly.

"Where?" echoed Little Nobody. "Why, in the next room, doubtless, good father, for a minute ago I was with him, and then I found myself here so suddenly that it seemed a little strange to me."

"Yes, it is strange," said the old priest, growing pale and hurriedly crossing himself. "But you are mistaken. He is not in this house. If you know where he is, tell me, daughter."

She shut her eyes reflectively, opened them again, and answered, dreamily:

"He was lying on a bed in a pretty room, where a lamp was burning all day. There was a red wound on his breast, and he was pale and ill. I do not know the house, but Madame Lorraine can tell you, for it was her servant, Mima, that I saw giving him a glass of water."

[CHAPTER XV.]

The nun looked at the old priest with round eyes of wonder.

"Father Quentin, what strange thing is this?" she uttered, fearfully.

"Ask me not to explain it, my good daughter; it is a manifestation of psychic power beyond human explanation," he replied, hastily quitting the room to seek the mother superior.

As a result of his interview with her, he was soon on his way toward Esplanade Street and Mme. Lorraine.

Seldom had the footsteps of such a holy man crossed the threshold of the gay and volatile French woman. She grew pale through her rouge and her powder when she read the name upon his card, and sent word that she was not at home.

He told the little page that he would wait until madame returned, and took a seat in the quiet salon.

Angry and baffled, Mme. Lorraine came down to him.

"Bénedicité, daughter," said Father Quentin; but she looked at him inquiringly, without bending her lovely head.

"I have come to see Eliot Van Zandt, who lies wounded in your house," he said, boldly.

She gave a quick, nervous start, perfectly perceptible to his eyes, and her glance sought his, full of frightened inquiry.

"The girl was right; he is hidden here," he thought, with fluttering pulses; but aloud he said, with pretended authority and outward calmness:

"Lead me to his presence; I must see the young man at once."

She had recovered her calmness as quickly as she had lost it.

"Holy father, you amaze me!" she exclaimed, haughtily. "The man is not here. I read in my paper only this morning that he had most mysteriously disappeared. But come, I see you do not believe me. You shall search my house."

He was a little staggered by her assurance.

"I do not wish to seem intrusive," he said; "but my informant was very positive."

Then he mentally shook himself. After all, he had no authority for his assertion, except the strange words of a girl who had just come out of a trance-like sleep—a girl who might simply have dreamed it all.

But he followed her all over the pretty, elegantly appointed house, the little page carrying the keys and unlocking door after door until he was sure that not an apartment in the house remained unvisited.

"You have a servant-woman, Mima," he said to her, as they descended the stairs.

"Yes," she replied; "Mima is in the kitchen, preparing luncheon. You shall see her, too, holy father."

Mima, at work over a dainty luncheon, bowed her head grimly to receive his blessing.

"You have been nursing a sick, a wounded man, Monsieur Van Zandt," he said, trying to take her by surprise; but she did not betray as much self-consciousness as her mistress.

"The holy father mistakes; I am a cook, not a nurse," she replied, coolly.

And so he came away baffled, after all.

Mme. Lorraine pressed a gold piece excitedly into the hand of the little page.

"Follow the good priest, and come back and tell me where he lives," she exclaimed.

Father Quentin went his way immediately back to the convent, with the story of his disappointment, and concluded that Little Nobody's dream had been simply a dream, with nothing supernatural about it. The light that had seemed to shine momentarily on the mystery of Eliot Van Zandt's fate went out in rayless darkness.

For the girl, she grew better and stronger daily, and submitted, with child-like patience, to the innumerable questions the good sisters asked her of her past life. They were shocked when she told them the story of her life with Mme. Lorraine, the life that she had counted of so little value that she had never even given her little white slave a name.

They went to Father Quentin with the shocking story—that the girl had no name, and that that heartless woman had called her Vixen, Savage, Baggage, Nobody, by turns. She must be baptized immediately.

The good priest was as heartily scandalized as one could wish. He chose a name at once for their charge. It was the sweet, simple one, Marie.

And that same day, in the little chapel, surrounded by the tearful nuns, Little Nobody stood before the altar and received the baptismal name, Marie.

The next day she was formally introduced into the convent school, which consisted of twenty young ladies, all boarders. She was cautioned to say nothing of her past life to her schoolmates. The priest said that she was a ward of his, and he wished the pupils to be very kind to Mlle. Marie, who, through the peculiar circumstances of her life, had not received necessary mental culture, and must now begin the rudiments of her education.

For downright, honest, uncompromising curiosity and rudeness, no class of human beings transcends the modern school-girl. The pupils of Le Bon Berger immediately set themselves to work to torture the new scholar—the little ignoramus, as they dubbed her. Such ignorance as this they had never encountered before. They teased and chaffed her in their audacious fashion, and speedily made her understand her humiliation—a great girl of fifteen or sixteen beginning to learn her alphabet like a child of five years!

She was used to being chaffed and despised, poor Little Nobody! It was the life at Mme. Loraine's over again, and the great dark eyes flashed in sullen scorn as they did then, and the small hands clinched themselves at her sides in impotent pain.

"I shall run away from here!" she thought, bitterly.

They had one habit with which they daily demonstrated to her their superior wisdom. At recess they would assemble in a great group and read aloud from the daily newspaper. Sitting apart under the great trees of the convent garden, the new pupil listened, against her will, to every word, and so there came to her one day, through this strange means, the news of Eliot Van Zandt's strange disappearance from the ranks of the living.

With dilated eyes, parted lips and wildly throbbing heart she listened, and when the reader's voice came to an end, the group was electrified by a spring and a rush and a vision of golden hair flying on the wind, as the new pupil flew, with the speed of an Atalanta, into the presence of the mother superior.

"What is the matter with Mademoiselle Marie? has she got a fit?" exclaimed the merry, mischievous school-girls.

[CHAPTER XVI.]

Little Nobody had flung down the spelling-book that had become her constant companion, and rushed impetuously to the presence of the good mother superior.

In a few minutes more she had wrested from the gentle nun her whole story, from the hour when Carmontelle had brought her to the convent until now, when, through the fanaticism of Father Quentin, she was as one dead to the world outside, her young life solemnly devoted to Heaven.

The dark eyes flashed indignantly, the pale cheeks crimsoned with anger.

"How dared he?" she exclaimed.

"Daughter!"

The gently remonstrating tone had no effect on the excited girl. She continued, angrily:

"Do you not see that it was wicked to shut me up for life? I do not want to be a nun. I will not be a nun! I tell you frankly their pale faces and black dresses give me the horrors! I shall leave here at once to find the poor Yankee that was wounded in defending me. He is in the power of Madame Lorraine, I am sure. I dreamed of him, and he was wounded, and in the care of Mima, her servant."

The nun assured her that Father Quentin had been already to Esplanade Street, and that Mme. Lorraine and her servant had declared their ignorance of the journalist's whereabouts.

Mlle. Marie's lip curled in unmitigated scorn.

"As if their words could be taken for truth," she uttered, bitterly. "Ah, I know her falsehoods too well."

The nun knew not what to do. The demand of the girl to leave the convent frightened her. She was compelled to falter a refusal.

Then Marie flatly rebelled. Some of the spirit that had made Remond call her a little savage flashed into her eyes, and she vowed that she would not be detained.

The mother went hastily to call Father Quentin. He firmly refused to grant the girl's wish. He was persuaded that to do so would be to insure her own eternal ruin.

The passionate heart, the undisciplined temper, took fire at his flat refusal.

To the poor girl it seemed that the whole world was arrayed against her.

Why had the old priest saved her from death if she was to be immured forever, as in a living tomb, in this grim old convent? The sanguine youth and hope within her rose up in passionate protest.

She pleaded, and when entreaty failed, she flung down a passionate defiance. Go she would! Eliot Van Zandt needed her to deliver him from Mme. Lorraine's baneful power. Should she torture him, destroy him, while she who owed him so much forsook him? Ah, no, no!

The result was that the defiant, contumacious pupil was consigned to solitary confinement in a cell for the remainder of the day, until she should come to her senses and ask pardon of the priest and the good mother superior.

She flung herself down, sobbing, on the cold stone floor, too angry to repeat the prayers Father Quentin had recommended her to address to the saints. Her thoughts centered around Eliot Van Zandt in agonizing solicitude.

"He was my friend; he fought Remond to save me," she murmured; "and shall I desert him in the danger he incurred for my sake? Never, never! not if to find him I have to venture back into the spider's den, into madame's presence again."

Day waned and faded, and the soft chiming of the vesper bells rang out the hour of her release. Pale and watchful, she knelt among the nuns and the pupils in the chapel, but ere the Aves and the Pater Nosters were over, she had flitted like a shadow from the cloister, and in "the dim, religious light" made her way into the garden, having first secured her hat and cloak from a convenient rack. Breathless she made her hurried way through the thick, dark shrubberies, praying now that Heaven would aid her to escape from the half-insane old priest.

"Where there's a will there's a way." Desperation had made her bold and reckless. But one means of escape presented itself, and that was to scale the high stone wall with the bristling spikes on top. By the aid of convenient shrubberies she accomplished the feat, and, with bleeding hands and torn garments, dropped down upon the other side into the street.

Fortunately, no one was passing, so her escape remained unnoticed. Panting for breath, in her eagerness she ran the length of a square and turned down a corner, losing herself in a labyrinth of streets. She knew not where she was; but that did not matter yet. She was only intent on putting the greatest possible distance between herself and the convent where she had been so nearly immured for life.

After an hour's rapid walking through a locality of which she was totally ignorant, she came suddenly into a street with which she was familiar. From this she knew that she could make her way without difficulty to Mme. Lorraine's house.

A sudden terror and reluctance seized upon her at thought of entering that house of danger, and unconsciously her footsteps slackened their headlong speed.

"To go back into the lion's den—it is hard!" she thought; then, bravely, "But my friend risked his life for me. I can not do less for him."

[CHAPTER XVII.]

Weary and footsore, she toiled on toward Esplanade Street, that was still far away.

She was but little used to walking, for Mme. Lorraine had never permitted her to leave the house, and her only excursions had been her stolen rides on the back of Selim, Mme. Lorraine's petted Arab. Her headlong pace at first began to tell on her now, and her steps grew slower and slower, while her slight figure and fair face attracted much attention from passers-by on the brightly lighted street, although her shy, frightened air protected her from insult from even the evil disposed. Her purity, so sweetly imaged on her young face, was a potent shield.

At length she emerged into Esplanade Street. She had been several hours making her way from the convent to this point.

It was nearing midnight, and the girl was vaguely frightened, although, in her almost infantile innocence and ignorance, she knew nothing of the "danger that walks forth with the night" in the streets of a great city. She had been more fortunate than she knew in escaping molestation and pursuit. Her chief fear had been of pursuit by the fanatical old priest, but her hurried glances behind her, from time to time, failed to discover any pursuer; and in a short while more she stood trembling before the dark, silent front of the house where her young life had been spent in semi-slavery as the plaything of giddy Mme. Lorraine.

A strange impulse seized her to turn and fly away; a stronger instinct rooted her to the ground.

"He is here! he must be here!" she murmured; "and I can not desert him, my good friend."

She stood there a few moments gazing at the closed door, then walked rapidly to the garden gate by which she had let Van Zandt through that memorable night. By a strange chance of fortune she had the key in her pocket.

Unlocking it softly, she let herself into the garden, and sunk down wearily on the rustic seat where she had fallen into such heavy sleep the night of her attempted abduction. Against her will her eyelids drooped, and slumber stole over her weary senses. The soft air coolly fanned her hot face, and the April dew fell heavily on her floating hair and thin summer dress; but, unconscious of the chill and dampness, she dreamed on until the first faint gray streak of dawn appeared in the east.

Then she woke suddenly, lifted her crouching figure, and looked about her. Memory rushed over her in a bewildering flood.

"I have been asleep when I ought to have been planning how to get into that house unperceived to search for him!" she thought, self-reproachfully.

She knew that there would be no great difficulty about the matter, because Mima was always very careless about fastening up the back part of the house. Being slight and agile, she made an easy entrance into the house by the united opportunities of a step-ladder and an unbolted back window.

With a throbbing heart and shining eyes, she found herself inside the house, and, as she believed, near to the kind Yankee friend in whom she took such an earnest interest.

Every one was asleep at this uncanny hour of the dawn, she knew. Lightly and fearlessly she went from room to room until she had explored the whole house in a fruitless quest for Eliot Van Zandt.

To her dismay and disappointment, her careful search was utterly unavailing, although from her knowledge of the house she was certain that she had left not a room unvisited. She had even peeped, by the aid of a hall-chair, into the transom over madame's door, and then into Mima's, too; but the sight of the latter placidly snoring among her pillows, and of madame slumbering sweetly, as if no unrepented sins lay heavy on her conscience, was all that rewarded her for her pains.

Disappointed and dismayed, she crept into an unused closet in the hall, and crouching in the cobwebby corner, gave herself up to such intense cogitation that the tired young brain succumbed again to weariness, and she drooped forward upon the hard floor fast asleep.

Day was far advanced when she roused herself, with a start, and again realized her situation. She heard steps and voices, and knew that the small family was awake and astir. Presently the hall clock chimed the hour of noon.

"I have been very lazy," she said to herself, "and—oh, dear, I am very hungry!"

She remembered then that the nuns had not given her any supper, because she had flatly refused to beg Father Quentin's pardon for her wilfulness.

"Never mind," she said valiantly to herself, "I must not remember that I am tired and hungry until I find my friend."

But hot tears came into the dark eyes, all the same. It was not pleasant to be tired and hungry and disappointed, and even in hiding like a dreadful criminal fearing to be captured.

Suddenly the swish of a silken robe trailed through the hall met her ears—Mme. Lorraine!

The fugitive could not resist the temptation to push the door ajar ever so little, and peep through the tiny aperture at her fair enemy.

And then something very strange happened.

Little Nobody, or Marie, as the nuns had called her, saw Mme. Lorraine stop abruptly at the end of the hall and press her white and jeweled hand upon a curious little ornate knob that appeared to form the center-piece of the carvings and panelings of the wainscoted wall. Instantly a section of the broad paneling glided backward through the solid wall, like a narrow door. Mme. Lorraine stepped lightly through the opening, and disappeared as the concealed door sprung quickly back into its place.

Like one stunned, the girl fell back into her place of hiding.

She had spent all her life in this strange house without a suspicion of the hidden room and the secret door, and its sudden discovery almost paralyzed her in the first moment.

But presently her reason returned to her, and she murmured with instant conviction:

"He is down there."

Following a sudden reckless impulse, and thinking nothing of consequences, she bounded from the closet and pressed her little hand upon the knob in the wall. At first it remained stationary, but when she pushed harder it yielded so suddenly as almost to precipitate her down a short flight of steps on which it opened. Recovering her balance, she stepped softly downward, and the narrow door slipped soundlessly into its place again, and as if impelled by a ghostly hand. But the fact was, that by some clever arrangement of springs beneath the first step, the slight pressure of her foot on the boards was sufficient to close it.

She found herself now on the narrow flight of steps, in thick darkness; but the momentary light that had glimmered through the open door had shown her a narrow passage and another door at the foot of the stairs.

Thrilling with curiosity, and without fear, the girl groped her way softly downward to the passage, starting as the murmur of voices came to her from the other side of the door.

"I was right. He is here!" she thought, and flung herself down on the floor in the darkness and listened with her ear against the door.

It was Mme. Lorraine's clear, bell-like voice that was speaking. It ceased its impassioned utterances at last, and a deep, rich, manly voice replied to her—a familiar voice that made Marie's heart beat tumultuously and a sweet, warm color glow in her cheeks.

"It is he," she whispered, forgetting hunger, weariness, everything unpleasant in exquisite relief and joy.

[CHAPTER XVIII.]

Almost a week had elapsed since the last visit of Mme. Lorraine to Eliot Van Zandt.

During that time he had been very ill from the fever brought on by his agitation at her indiscreet announcement of the death of the girl in whom he had been so warmly interested.

All Mima's skill and care had been required to ward off a fatal consequence to this relapse, and the woman had sternly forbidden any more calls from her mistress during this critical state. Mme. Lorraine was so frightened that she was very obedient to the mandate; but now the embargo had been removed, and she was free to visit the fascinating patient.

He was better. Indeed, he was rapidly convalescing, owing to Mima's good nursing, aided by his youth and a strong constitution.

So, on this lovely April morning, madame had made herself beautiful by every device of art at her command, and hurried through the secret door to visit the wounded captive whom she held in durance vile.

Pale and wan, but exceedingly handsome still, Eliot Van Zandt lay upon a velvet lounge, his fair Saxon beauty thrown into strong relief by the dressing-gown of dark-blue silk that madame's care had supplied.

At the entrance of the superbly dressed and handsome woman, his dark brows met with a heavy frown.

"I gave orders, Madame Lorraine, that you should not be admitted again!" he exclaimed, with the frank petulance of convalescence.

Madame gave her graceful head an airy toss.

"No one can debar me from the privilege of entering any room in my own house," she replied, coolly.

"Your own house?" starting.

"Precisely," with a maddening smile; and for at least two minutes a dead silence reigned in the room that, with its swinging-lamp burning brightly, presented the appearance of night, although it was midday outside.

Then he exclaimed, angrily:

"I had already become convinced that there was something mysterious in my sojourn here. I have found out that I am in an underground apartment from which there is no apparent egress. I know that no living soul but yourself and your servant has been near me since I was ill. Am I, then, your prisoner?"

Smilingly, she replied:

"Do not call it by so harsh a word. It is true that you are in my house, hidden in an underground apartment; but it was for your own good that I brought you here. You had fatally wounded Remond, and the authorities were after you. I—I love you," falteringly. "I could not give you up to justice. So you are here—a prisoner, if you will, but a beloved and well cared-for one."

"Yes, I have received skillful care and attention from your servant. I thank you," very stiffly; "but now I am well, I desire to go."

"I am suspected of harboring you. My house is watched by officers of the law. Should you go out, you would be instantly arrested. Mon Dieu! that must not be!"

She looked at him with tender, pleading eyes.

He answered, curtly:

"If I have hurt Remond, I am willing to answer to the law for my crime committed in the defense of the weak and the helpless. I have no wish to shirk my punishment. You understand me now, and you will let me go. I demand my release!"

Clasping her jeweled hands together in pretended despair, she exclaimed:

"But, good Heaven! mon ami, I can not let you be so reckless. Think a moment what will happen if they take you into custody. If the man dies, you may be—hung!"

"I take all the risk; only show me the way out of my hated prison!" he exclaimed, impatiently; and, with sudden passion, Mme. Lorraine answered, boldly:

"Then, by Heaven, I will not! There is but one way by which you can ever leave this room, whose existence is known to no human being but Mima, myself, and you."

She saw him grow deathly pale to the roots of his hair, as he asked, with pretended coolness:

"And that way, my darling jailer?"

With something like a blush struggling through the cosmetics that covered her face, she replied firmly, although in a low voice:

"As my husband."

There was an awkward silence; the man was blushing for her; the dark-red flush went up to the roots of his hair; she saw it, and bit her lips. At last he said, with cool disdain:

"You have already a husband in an insane asylum."

She interrupted, eagerly:

"No, no—not my husband. I am free—that is, I was divorced by law from him years ago."

She came nearer; she flung herself, with a rustle of silk and heavy waft of patchouli, down by his side on the sofa. Looking up into his face with burning eyes, she exclaimed, wildly:

"Do not look so coldly and scornfully upon me! Since you came to New Orleans, you have changed all my life. I never loved before. I married Monsieur Lorraine for wealth and position, without a single heart-throb for the man. But you I love, you I have sworn to win. What is there unreasonable about it, that your eyes flash so proudly? You are handsome, it is true, but I also am beautiful. You are gifted, but you are poor, while I am rolling in wealth. I can take you from your drudging life and make your existence a dream of luxury and ease. That is generous, is it not? But you have bewitched me; you have changed all my nature; you have taught me to love."

"I never tried to do so," he replied, with unmoved coldness.

"Cold-hearted Yankee! have you no feeling, no pity?" she demanded, reproachfully. "Look at me fairly," plucking impatiently at his sleeve. "Am I not fair enough to teach you to love me?"

"No," he answered, curtly, shrinking from her touch, but looking straight into her impassioned eyes with cold, unmoved gray orbs.

"Perhaps you already love some one else?" she burst forth, jealously.

"No," in a cold, incisive voice.

A low laugh of triumph broke from her, and she exclaimed:

"Then I will not give you up. You shall be my husband."

He gave her an angry stare, but she continued, unheeding:

"To-night I leave New Orleans with my servant Mima. I have my reasons for this step. N'importe; they concern not you. I have made up my mind to be your wife, to bear your name, to go home with you to Boston. If you say the word, a priest shall be brought within the hour to make us one. Then we can escape together to-night and fly this fatal city which now holds imminent danger for you. Do you consent?"

He looked with his cold, disconcerting gaze full into her eyes.

"What if I refuse?" he queried.

"You are a Yankee all over—you answer one question with another," she said, with a faint, mirthless laugh. "But my alternative is so bitter I shrink from naming it. Tell me, are you going to make me your loving wife?"

"I would die first!" he responded, with passionate emphasis.

She looked up at him, pale with wrath and mortification, and hissed, angrily:

"You have chosen well, for it will come to that—to—to death!"

"You would murder me?" he exclaimed, with a start; and she answered, defiantly:

"If you can not be mine, no one else shall ever have your love or your name. If you persist in refusing my generous offer, I shall go away from here with Mima to-night; but I shall leave you in this cellar to starve and to die, and to molder into dust until the story of your mysterious disappearance that night has been forgotten of men."

"You could not be so inhuman!" he uttered, with paling lips.

"I can, and I will," laughing mockingly. "Take your choice now, monsieur—my time is limited. Shall it be love—or—death?"

With ineffable scorn, although his handsome features had waned to a marble pallor, he replied, in a voice of proud disdain:

"Such love—the love of a guilty, wicked woman like you, Madame Lorraine—leaves one no choice but death!"

[CHAPTER XIX.]

He never forgot the glare of rage the angry woman fixed upon him for a moment.

Her eyes fairly blazed as she hissed, vindictively:

"You have made your choice, and mine is the last human face you will look upon. A few days of isolation in this dreary chamber, without food or drink, and you will go mad with horror and die of starvation. Adieu, monsieur. I wish you bon voyage to Hades!"

She made him a mocking courtesy, and swept to the door, tearing it open with such impetuous haste that the listener outside had no time to step aside, only to spring up wildly and confront the angry woman, who immediately uttered a shriek of horror and fled up the narrow stair-way, disappearing through the secret door in an incredibly short space of time.

In the darkness of the narrow passage she had taken the pale-faced, wild-eyed girl for a visitant from the other world, and had fled in fear and terror from the supposed ghostly presence.

In her terror she had forgotten to shut the door upon Van Zandt, and with starting eyes he witnessed the strange scene. For an instant he fancied, like Mme. Lorraine, that it was a spirit standing there in the gloom of the narrow passage, with face and form like that of the dead little Mlle. Nobody. Then reason came to his aid. He sprung from the sofa, and just as the secret door shut behind the frightened madame, he caught the girl's cold hand and drew her into the room.

"Oh, my little ma'amselle! So that wicked woman lied when she told me that you were dead!" he exclaimed.

She answered, vivaciously:

"No; for I have been dead and buried since I saw you, Monsieur Van Zandt. Don't you see that Madame Lorraine took me for a ghost? It was very fortunate for me, was it not?" and soft, sweet trills of laughter bubbled over her lips.

In her joy at finding him again, she forgot hunger, fear, and weariness.

And in her excitement and exhilaration she rapidly poured out all that had happened to her since that night, nearly two weeks ago, when he and Carmontelle had so ably prevented her abduction by Remond.

He listened in deepest interest; and if Mme. Lorraine could have seen the joy that sparkled in his expressive eyes, she would have felt like plunging a dagger into the white breast of the girl who had brought that joy there by her return, as it were, from the dead.

He laughed with her at the idea of Mme. Lorraine having fooled herself so cleverly in imagining Little Nobody a ghost.

"But you must not call me Little Nobody any longer. I am Marie now," she said, brightly.

"It is a sweet, pretty name," he replied; "but I wish I had been permitted to choose your name. It should have been something else—something unique, like yourself."

She did not know what the word unique meant. She looked at him curiously.

"What would you have called me?" she queried.

"Perhaps I will tell you some day," he replied, with an odd little sigh; and then he changed the subject by telling her how glad he was that she had been saved from death, and how thankful that she had come to save him from the tortures of death by starvation.

The dark eyes sparkled with eager joy.

"Ah, how pleasant it is to have a friend!" she said, naïvely. "First you saved me, now I am going to save you. I heard everything she said to you. Oh, how cruel and wicked she is! And it must be dreadful," shuddering, "to starve! I can fancy some of its horrors, for, do you know, Monsieur Van Zandt, I am very hungry now? I have had no supper nor breakfast."

"Poor child!" he exclaimed, and glanced at a covered waiter on a stand that contained the remains of his late breakfast. He drew off the dainty napkin, and she saw delicate rolls, broiled chicken, cold ham, preserves, fresh strawberries, chocolate and coffee, the whole flanked by a bottle of sherry.

"I had no appetite for my breakfast, and Mima did not come back to remove the tray," he said. "Dare I offer you the remains of the repast? The chocolate is cold, but I drank none of it; I preferred coffee. Likewise, the broiled chicken is untouched—in fact, I eat nothing but a roll."

"You shall see that I will do more justice to the fare than that," she laughed; and sitting down by the tray, she made a substantial meal, after which she declared herself much strengthened.

It was very pleasant to have this bright, hopeful young creature with him, in lieu of the loneliness and the cruel fate to which Mme. Lorraine had doomed him. He listened with interest to her pretty plans for his release. She told him how, in her drugged sleep, she had beheld him in this very room, attended by the big, ugly, but skillful Mima.

"Heaven must have sent you that vision," he said, with fervent gratitude. "Oh, how glad I am that I shall go free again into the world! I have sweet, young sisters little older than you, my child, who would grieve for me were I to die like this. Are you sure, quite sure, that you possess the secret of the opening of the hidden door?"

Marie started.

"It must be the same as that of the outside—must it not, monsieur?" she queried, with a confident air.

"I am not sure, but I hope it is," he replied, with a sudden dawning anxiety.

"I will go and see at once," she exclaimed, starting toward the door.

"No, no," he said, and held her back.

"But why?" she asked, turning on him her pretty, puzzled face.

With a smile, he answered:

"Do you not see that it would not be safe to venture to open the door while our enemies remain in the house? We must wait patiently here until night—until they are gone away. Then we shall be able to effect our escape unmolested."

He spoke more cheerfully than he felt. A strange dread was upon him. What if they should not be able to open the door at the head of the cellar stair-way?

What if he were indeed hopelessly immured within this prison, the life of the girl forfeited to the bravery and daring that had led her to seek and save him?

"Oh, I could bear it like a man, alone, but for her to perish under the slow agony of starvation—Heaven forbid it!" he groaned, but breathed not a word of his fears to the girl who was full of hope and eager expectancy, looking eagerly forward to the hour of their release.

In spite of his anxiety, he spent a not unpleasant day in the society of Marie. She was so lovely and so unique, in her total ignorance of the world, that she had a subtle charm for the man inured to the conventionalities of society. Then, too, she was constantly exciting his wonder by the general correctness of her language, although he knew that she was totally uneducated. But he easily accounted for this by recalling the fact that she had been brought up in constant contact with Mme. Lorraine and her visitors, and so unconsciously acquired the habit of correct speaking.

"What a contrast she is to that wicked woman!" he thought, looking admiringly at the eager, earnest, mobile face, so innocently frank, all the feelings of her pure soul mirrored in her limpid eyes. Recalling madame's story that the girl was low-born, he frowned, and said angrily to himself:

"I do not believe it. She has nothing low about her. There is some mystery about her origin, and Madame Lorraine does not choose to reveal it, that is all."

Certainly, no girl born with the blood of a hundred earls in her veins could have had better instincts or more innate refinement than this Little Nobody. She was innocently frank, but she was also charmingly shy and modest. She was child and woman exquisitely blended:

"Standing with reluctant feet
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood flee."

Although she had been overjoyed at finding the reported dead man alive, she had been very undemonstrative in her joy. She had not offered him a single caress, such as one so young might have done; she had not even seated herself near him. She contented herself with looking at him across the breadth of the room, not as one afraid, but with a perfectly natural reserve, and she preserved this frank, unembarrassed demeanor throughout the whole day, which did not seem long to either, although dinner and supper were among the things that were not. Neither one remembered it, neither one was conscious of any sensation of hunger.

"But how are we to know when night comes? It is always night down here," he said.

"It was about midday when I followed Madame Lorraine down here. Have you a watch?" she asked.

"Yes; and I have never permitted it to run down since I came here. It is now twenty minutes to four o'clock," he said.

"Then it is now afternoon. By and by, when the watch tells us it is nightfall, I will creep up the steps and listen for sounds in the hall. When I hear them go away, it will be the signal for us to open the secret door and escape," she said.

At eight o'clock, with her ear pressed against the secret paneled door, she heard mistress and maid going through the hall to the front door. It opened and shut. Marie heard distinctly the loud click of the key in the lock outside. They had gone, leaving their victim to perish, as they thought, by the slow pangs of starvation.

Van Zandt was close by her side; she turned to him eagerly.

"I have been feeling the door in the dark for a knob like that on the outside, but I can not find it," she said. "The surface seems perfectly smooth, not carved as on the outside. Will you bring the lamp, monsieur, and let us search for it?"

With a sinking heart, he obeyed her request, detaching the swinging-lamp from its bronze frame and taking it up the dark stair-way in his hand. Even then, in his eager anxiety, his artistic eye took note of the gleam of the light on the girl's picturesque masses of red-gold hair, as it waved in silken luxuriance over her shoulders.

[CHAPTER XX.]

Marie did not see Van Zandt's eyes looking admiringly at her beautiful hair.

She was gazing with eager eyes at the narrow door that had shut her in with him whom she had dared so much to find and save.

She saw with some dismay that its inner surface was just what it had appeared when she had moved her fingers over it in the dark—perfectly smooth, without seam, knob, or lock, and no apparent way of moving it from its place.

Van Zandt gave her the lamp to hold, and put his shoulder to the immovable door, but his whole strength availed nothing against its grim solidity.

Then he spent an anxious hour trying the steps and the sides of the door in an effort to find its mysterious open sesame.

Not an iota of success rewarded his frantic efforts.

But he would not give way to despair.

"I shall have to cut our way out," he said. "But, as I have no hatchet, it will be slow work with my jack-knife. You may have to hold that lamp for hours, ma'amselle, while I whittle a hole in the door big enough for you to creep through."

"That is nothing. I shall not be tired," she replied, bravely.

But she was not called upon for this exhibition of patience.

The first few strokes of the knife revealed to him the appalling fact that the inside of the door was not of wood, but iron—iron so heavily coated with thick paint that it had cleverly deceived the superficial touch.

Then indeed she caught a gleam of trouble in his eyes—trouble that was almost despair. Her own face paled, and a sigh of dismay escaped her lips.

When he heard it, he forced a smile.

"Do not be frightened; we will find some other way," he said.

And they went back to the room and searched the walls carefully to see if there was any weak spot by which they might effect an escape. Windows there were none, and the ventilation of the room had been cleverly effected by pipes that were let into the ceiling above. The walls around were damp and cool, showing that they were built into the earth; but they were thick and heavy, and Van Zandt's jack-knife made no impression on the heavy oaken planks beneath the handsome wall-papering.

Two hours were spent in this vain quest for means of egress from their prison, and drops of dew beaded the young man's face. He was weak from his illness and from the fast that had lasted all day, and sat down at last to rest and to think what he should do next.

"Oh, how tired and weak you must be! I am so sorry I eat your breakfast! I shouldn't have done so, but I thought we should get out of here directly!" exclaimed the girl, regretfully.

She brought him the wine and poured out a glass, which she forced him to taste. It ran warmly through his veins, and courage returned to him again.

"Now, no more for me," he said, pressing back the little hand that offered the second glass. "Drink that yourself ma'amselle, and we must keep the rest for you, for we can not tell how long it may be before we get out of this."

"I do not need it; I am strong enough without it," she replied, and replaced the untouched glass on the stand. Then she saw him looking at her with a hopeful gleam in his eyes.

"I have a new thought," he said. "Perhaps if we could make ourselves heard from down here, some one might come to our relief. Let us halloo, ma'amselle, with all our might."

It would have been ludicrous if it had not been so pitiful to hear them shouting in concert at the top of their voices. Indeed, they paused now and then to look at each other with laughing eyes, and to pant with exhaustion from their efforts, but the shouting was kept up at intervals until Van Zandt's watch recorded the hour of midnight.

Then he said, wearily:

"There is no help for it. We shall have to pass the night here, I suppose."

He opened the door and began to push his sofa out into the narrow little passage.

"What are you going to do?" Marie asked him, with large eyes of wonder.

"I am simply converting this passage into a temporary bedroom for myself," he answered. "Good-night, Ma'amselle Marie; I leave you my room and bed. Lie down and rest, and in the morning we will try to devise some new plan for our escape."

He opened and shut the door, and Marie was alone. She threw herself wearily on the luxurious bed, and in spite of hunger and thirst and terror, slept heavily for hours.

When she awakened, she felt sure that day must be far advanced. She found a large pitcher of water and poured out some into a basin and bathed her face and hands. Then she peeped out into the dark passage for Van Zandt.

He was sitting up composedly on his sofa, as if he had been awake for hours.

"Oh, dear, monsieur, I have kept you out in the dark for hours! Come in," she exclaimed; and he accepted the invitation with alacrity, pushing in his convenient sofa before him.

Laughingly, he said:

"I began to think you were a second Rip Van Winkle, Ma'amselle Marie;" and, holding out his watch to her, she saw that it was near the middle of the day.

"Oh, how lazy I have been! Forgive me!" she cried, vexed with herself. "You must have been very tired waiting out there in the dark?"

"No, for I was at work trying to find the secret spring of the iron door, but I only wasted my time and strength," he replied, sadly.

"Oh, what are we going to do?" she burst out, in sudden terror.

"That is what I was asking myself at intervals all through the night," said Eliot Van Zandt. "Oh, my child—my brave little girl! what would I not give if only you had not followed Madame Lorraine into this fatal prison! I could suffer alone with a man's fortitude, but for you to share my fate is too dreadful!"

His voice broke and his eyes grew strangely dim. She answered, with pretty gravity:

"It was through your goodness to me that you were first betrayed into her power; and if you have to suffer for it, I want to suffer, too. We are friends, you know. But we must not give up hope yet. I am more sorry than ever that I eat your breakfast; but take a little of the wine, and it will strengthen you."

"After you," he replied, seeing that she would not be satisfied without seeing him take some. He held the glass to her lips, and she swallowed a few drops under protest. He went through the same form, saying to himself that he must save it all for her, for there was nothing else between her and utter starvation.

"What shall we do next? Halloo again?" she asked, with a smile.

"I do not believe my lungs are strong enough to go over that ordeal again. The wound in my breast is not quite healed over yet," he said. "But suppose we sing instead?"

"I do not know how to sing," she answered.

"Very well; I shall have to do all the singing," he replied, good-humoredly. "And, do you know, I think it is a rather good idea to sing, for who knows but it may penetrate to the street, and if it be known that Madame Lorraine be gone away, curiosity may lead some one to investigate into the cause of the mysterious noise, and then we may be found."

"Oh, how clever you are! Do begin at once!" she exclaimed, with a hopeful light in her dark eyes.

"I will," he replied; and somehow the first song that came to his mind was a sweet, sad love song he had been used to sing with his fair young sisters in the far-off Northern home he loved so well:

"In days of old, when knights were bold,
And barons held their sway,
A warrior bold, with spurs of gold,
Sung merrily his lay:
'My love is young and fair,
My love hath golden hair,
And eyes so bright and heart so true
That none with her compare;
So what care I, tho' death be nigh,
I'll live for love or die!'

"So this brave knight, in armor bright,
Went gayly to the fray;
He fought the fight, but ere the night
His soul had passed away.
The plighted ring he wore
Was crushed and wet with gore;
Yet ere he died he bravely cried:
'I've kept the vow I swore;
So what care I, tho' death be nigh,
I've fought for love, and die—
For love I die!'"

The girl's beautiful eyes looked at the singer, dark and grave with the strange emotions swelling at her heart. She had heard Mme. Lorraine and the men from the Jockey Club sing their best, but it had not affected her like this. A strange, sweet awe stole over her, mixed with a buoyancy and lightness that was thrilling and yet solemn. With the strange, new sensation there came to her a sudden memory of the chapel at Le Bon Berger, and the soft, murmuring voices of the nuns at prayer. She felt like praying.

He looked at her curiously, and she said, with child-like directness:

"I can not sing, but the nuns at the convent taught me how to pray. I will pray to the good God, and perhaps He will hear me and save us."

The next minute she had thrown herself down by a chair, bowed her golden head on her hands, and a low, soft murmur of prayer filled the room. He hesitated a moment, then went and knelt down by her side, and his deeper, stronger voice filled the room with a strong, manly petition for help and pity.

Then he did not feel like singing again for awhile, so sweet and deep an awe pervaded his mind. Marie sat opposite, her tiny hands folded in her lap, a lovely seriousness on her piquant face.

By and by he sung again, but this time it was one of the solemn chants, such as might be heard in the choirs of the old cathedrals.

The day wore on like this, and the night fell again, with no sign that the persistent singing had attracted any attention from the outer world.

Sadly enough, and with many grim forebodings, Van Zandt wheeled his sofa again into the narrow passage for his night's rest. As he bid her good-night, Marie said, sadly:

"The oil is getting low in the lamp. I will extinguish it to-night if you have a match to light it in the morning."

He was fortunate enough to find a little match-case in his pocket filled with matches that he carried for lighting his cigars; so Marie extinguished the lamp until morning, and they turned on a very dim light that day, for they feared that they should soon be left in total darkness. To-day, also, the last of the wine was used, Marie insisting that they should share alike, for both began to feel the deathly weakness of hunger paralyzing their energies. The singing at intervals was still persevered in, although Van Zandt's voice began to fail strangely from the weakness of hunger and illness. Hope failed him, too, as this, the third day of their mutual imprisonment waned to a close, and he regretted bitterly that he had allowed Marie to force him to take a share of the precious sherry.

Faint and fainter waxed the light, and the two victims of Mme. Lorraine's malignity began to realize that the horrors of Cimmerian darkness were about to be added to those of starvation and isolation.

"Sing something," said Marie, from the depths of the arm-chair where she was resting.