Jimmy Knight's admirable hospitality continued; he devoted his entire attention to his guests, he made conversation and he led it into the channels he desired it to follow. Then, when the psychological moment had come, he acted with the skill of a Talleyrand. No one but he knew precisely how Bob's proposal was couched, whence it originated, or by what subtlety the victim had been induced to make it. As a matter of fact, it was no proposal, and not even Bob himself suspected how his words had been twisted.

He was just dimly aware of some turn in the conversation, when he heard Jim exclaim:

"By Jove, Sis, Bob asks you to marry him!"

In prize-ring parlance, Jimmy had "feinted" his opponent into a lead, then taken prompt advantage to "counter."

Lorelei awoke to her surroundings with a start, sensing the sudden gravity that had fallen upon her three companions.

"What--?"

Lilas nodded and smiled at the bewildered lover. "That's the way to put it over, Bob--before witnesses."

"Don't joke about such things," cried Lorelei, sharply.

"Joke? Who's joking?" Jim was indignant and glanced appealingly at Bob. "You meant it, didn't you?"

"Sure. No joking matter," Bob declared, vaguely.

"I was just saying that this is no life for a fellow to lead-- batting 'round the way I do; then Jim said--I mean _I_ said--I needed a wife, a beautiful wife. I never saw a girl beautiful enough to suit me before, and he said--"

Jim's relief came as an explosion.

"There! That's English. You spoke a mouthful that time, Bob, for she certainly is a beauty bright. But I didn't think you had the nerve to ask her. If she says yes, you'll be the luckiest man in New York--the whole town's crazy about her."

"We'll make her say yes," Lilas added, with drunken decision.

"Come, dear, say it." She bent a flushed face toward Lorelei and laid a loose hand upon her arm. "Well? What's your answer?"

Bob fixed heavy eyes upon his heart's desire and echoed: "Yes.

What d' you say?" More than once in his sober moments he had pondered such a query, and now that it appeared to have taken shape without conscious effort, he was not displeased with himself.

"I say, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING," Lorelei responded, curtly.

Now Bob, like all men in his condition, was quite certain that he was in perfect possession of his faculties, and therefore he very naturally resented such an absurd a.s.sertion. "Don't you b'lieve it," he protested. "I know what I'm doing, all right, all right."

"A man never speaks his mind until he's ginned," Lilas giggled.

"Righto! I'm not half drunk yet."

Jim urged the suitor on with a nervous laugh, at the same time avoiding his sister's eyes. "She's stalling, Bob. Make her answer."

"Yes or no?" forcefully insisted the wooer, determined, now, to show his complete sobriety.

"No."

Jim seized Wharton's hand and shook it l.u.s.tily. "Congratulations, old man; that means yes. I'm her brother, and I know. Why, she told father that you were her ideal, and pa said he'd die happy if you two were married. He meant it, too; he's a mighty sick man."

Lorelei stirred uncomfortably, and the faint color in her cheeks faded slowly. "We'll talk about it some other time--to-morrow.

Please don't tease the poor man any more. He didn't know what he was saying, and--now, for Heaven's sake, talk about something else."

Jim leaped to his feet with a grin and a chuckle, then drew Lilas from her chair, saying: "The lovers are embarra.s.sed, and they're dying to be alone. Let's leave 'em to talk it over."

"She's a dear, Bob, and I wish you both joy. But don't kiss her here," said Lilas, warningly; then with a wave of her hand she turned toward the dancing-room with Jim.

"Call us when you've fixed the date," laughed the latter, over his shoulder.

When he and Lilas had danced the encore and returned to the table Bob rose unsteadily, gla.s.s in hand, and nodded at them.

"Thanks, n.o.ble comrades," he proclaimed; "she's mine!"

"Hurrah!" Lilas kissed Lorelei effusively. Jim seized Bob's hand, crying:

"Brother!" He waved to a waiter and ordered a magnum of champagne.

"Bring me a wreath of orange blossoms and a wedding-cake, too."

His jubilation attracted the attention of the other diners; the occupants of a near-by table began to applaud, whereupon Bob beamed with delight.

Lorelei was very white now, but she was given no chance to speak.

Nor was there anything for her to say, torn as she was by conflicting emotions and uncertain of what feeling most strongly possessed her. Foremost in her thoughts was the realization that she had won the fight she had been reared and trained for, that the climax of her worldly hopes had come; but with this she also experienced a sickly loathing for herself. During Bob's protestations of love she had fought a brief but disastrous battle. That moral perfidy which had been her teaching since childhood had influenced her decision no more perhaps than her terror at the plight in which her mysterious persecution had left her. Weighing on the same side with these considerations were also the needs of her family, her own bitter distaste for her present life, and her desire for peace and outward respectability even at the cost of secret degradation. She had decided swiftly, recklessly, reasoning that this proffered marriage was merely a bargain by which she got more than she gave. She had accepted without allowing her better self an opportunity to marshal its protests, and, having closed her eyes and leaped into the dark, it now seemed easier to meet new consequences than to heed those higher feelings that were tardily struggling for expression. She did pity Wharton, however, for it seemed to her that he was the injured party. When he was himself he was a very decent fellow, and it was a contemptible trick thus to cheat him. It would have been less ign.o.ble to sell herself outright to a man she detested-- for the transaction would then have been one of dollars and cents, purely, a sacrifice prompted by necessity, so she reasoned-- whereas to impose upon the weakness of one she rather liked was not only dishonest, but vile.

But she was in a wanton mood to-night, and of late a voice had been desperately urging her to grasp at what she could, that she might, as long as possible, delay her descent into worse conditions.

She heard Lilas inquiring: "When does the marriage come off? Right away?"

Bob, who appeared somewhat dazed by the suddenness and the completeness of his good fortune, smiled vacantly. "Any time suits me," he said. "I'm a happy man--little Joys are capering all over the place and old Dr. Gloom has packed his grip."

Jim startled them all by saying, crisply: "Let's make it to-night.

I know Bob--he's not the sort to wait."

"Fine! Never thought of that." Bob welcomed the suggestion with a delight that drowned Lorelei's frightened protest; then, as the idea grew in his mind, he joyously appropriated it as his own. A mere proposal of marriage and an acceptance were more or less hackneyed; the event contained no elements of the spectacular; but to follow it promptly with a midnight ceremony impressed him as a grandiose achievement and one calculated to shed l.u.s.ter upon his adventurous career. "That's my idea of romance--that's the way I like to do things," he declared. "We'll be married soon's I pay this check." Fumbling through his pockets, he remembered that his last dollar had gone across Melcher's gaming-table earlier in the evening, and cried in dismay, "Hold on! Nothing doing in the marriage line, after all. I'm bust. Isn't that a burglar's luck?

And right on the altar steps, too."

"I'll settle everything--all the way through," Jim offered, eagerly.

Bob feebly demurred, a.s.serting that his temporary financial condition ruined the whole joke, and that he never married without a pocket full of money; but as Jim insisted, and seeing that Miss Lynn was becoming tearful at the thought of a disappointment, he yielded grudgingly.

"But--I say--where do they keep these weddings?" he inquired.

"Everything's closed now, and there's n.o.body dancing at the City Hall, is there?" He appealed helplessly to Jim.

Jim rose to the occasion with the same prompt.i.tude he had displayed throughout. "Leave it to Jimmy the Fixer," he cried, rea.s.suringly. "Marriages aren't made in heaven any more--that's old stuff. They're made in Hoboken, while the cab waits. Get your things on, everybody, while I telephone." He allowed no loitering; he waved the girls away, sent the waiter scurrying with his bill, helped Robert secure hat and stick, and then dove into a telephone-booth as a woodchuck enters its hole. When he had disposed his three charges inside a taxi-cab he disappeared briefly, to return with a basket of champagne upon his arm. It is a wise general who provides himself in advance with ammunition.

It was not late, as late hours are computed, but the streets were empty of traffic; hence the driver made good time, and a waiting ferry at the foot of Forty-second Street helped to shorten the journey. The wine-basket was lighter as the machine rushed up the cobbled incline to the crest of the Weehawken bluffs; Bob and Lilas were singing as it tore down the Boulevard.

The smooth celerity with which this whole adventure ran its course argued a thorough preparation on James's part, but Lorelei was in no condition to a.n.a.lyze. On the contrary, she was tossed in the vortex of warring impulses. More than once she laid her hand upon the cab door, feeling that she could not go on with this d.a.m.nable travesty. But necessity urged; she was tired, disgusted, reckless.

Her former arguments continued to prove potent.

Even at the journey's end there was a suspicious lack of delay.

The vehicle stopped in a narrow business street, now dark and dismal; its occupants were hurried up a stairway and into a room filled with law-books, where a sleepy Justice of the Peace was nodding in a cloud of cigar smoke. There followed a noisy shuffling of chairs, some mumbled questions and answers, the crackle of papers, a deal of unintelligible rigamarole, then a man's heavy seal-ring was slipped upon Lorelei's finger, and she knew herself to be Mrs. Robert Wharton. It was all confused, unimpressive, unreal. She was never able fully to recall the picture of that room or the events that occurred there. They formed but a part of the kaleidoscopic jumble of the night's occurrences.

The wedding party was in the cab once more, and it was under way.

Lilas was singing maudlinly, lying back in Jim's arms with her feet projecting through a window; the groom was laughing foolishly and pawing at his bride. The street lights reeled by in drunken procession. Now that his work was done, Jim flung aside his caution and, popping the cork of a wine-bottle, drank deeply, in disregard of Lilas's attempts to share the contents. He was fiercely elated; he imbibed with the eager thirst of a dipsomaniac. It was all so like a nightmare that Lorelei began to doubt her own sanity.