"My mother will do whatever her son wishes. She would be kind to a young gorilla if I said so. Don't fear for your niece--she will be treated well."

"Let it be so, or beware! A blood-hound on your track would be less deadly than I! I will be here again, and yet again, to see for myself that you keep your word."

She strode to the door, opened it, and stood in the illuminated ball.

Johnson just had time to vanish from the key-hole and no more. Down the stair-way pealed the wild, melancholy music of a German waltz; from the dining-room came the clink and jingle of silver, and china, and gla.s.s.

The woman's haggard face filled with scorn and bitterness as she gave one fleeting, backward glance.

"They say there is a just and avenging Heaven, yet Carl Walraven is master of all this. Wealth, love, and honor for him, and a nameless grave for her; the streets, foul and deadly, for me. The mill of the G.o.ds may grind sure, but it grinds fearfully slow--fearfully slow!"

They were the last words Carl Walraven heard her utter. She opened the house door, gathered her threadbare shawl closer around her, and fluttered away in the wild, wet night.

CHAPTER II.

"CRICKET."

The little provincial theater was crowded from pit to dome--long tiers of changing faces and luminous eyes. There was a prevalent odor of stale tobacco, and orange-peel, and bad gas; and there was bustle, and noise, and laughter, and a harsh collection of stringed instruments grinding out the overture.

There were stamps and calls for the tawdry curtain to rise, when a gentleman entered, sauntered up to a front seat, took up a bill and began to read it--a tall, middle-aged, rather distinguished-looking man, black and bearded, with piercing eyes, superfine clothes, and a general aristocratic air about him.

People paused to look again at him--for he was a stranger there--but n.o.body recognized him, and Mr. Carl Walraven read his bill undisturbed.

The play was "Fanchon the Cricket," and the bill announced, in very big capitals, that the part of Fanchon was to be played by that "distinguished and beautiful young English actress, Miss Mollie Dane."

Mr. Walraven saw no more; he sat holding the strip of paper before him, and staring at the one name as if the fat letters fascinated him--"Fanchon, Miss Mollie Dane."

A shrill-voiced bell tinkled, and the drop-curtain went up, and the household of Father Barbeaud was revealed. There was a general settling into seats, hats flew off, the noises ceased, and the play began.

A moment or two, and, in rags and tatters, hair streaming, and feet bare, on the stage bounded Fanchon, the Cricket.

There was an uproarious greeting. Evidently it was not Miss Dane's first appearance before that audience, and still more evidently she was a prime favorite.

Mr. Walraven dropped his bill, poised his lorgnette, and prepared to stare his fill.

She was very well worth looking at, this clear-voiced Mollie Dane--through the tatters and unkempt hair he could see that. The stars in the frosty November sky without were not brighter than her dark, bright eyes; no silvery music that the heir of all the Walravens had ever heard was clearer or sweeter than her free, girlish laugh; no golden sunburst ever more beautiful than the waving banner of wild, yellow hair. Mollie Dane stood before him a beauty born.

Every nerve in Carl Walraven's body thrilled as he looked at her. How lovely that face! How sweet that voice, that laugh! How eminently well she acted!

He had seen women of whom the world raved play that very part; but he had never, no, never seen it better played than he saw it to-night.

"She will make the world ring with her name if she adheres to the stage," Carl Walraven said to himself, enthusiastically; "and she never will play anything better than she plays the 'Cricket.' She is Fanchon herself--saucy, daring, generous, irresistible Fanchon! And she is beautiful as the angels above."

The play went on; Fanchon danced, and sobbed, and sung, and wept, and was mischievous as a scratching kitten, and gentle as a turtle-dove; took all the hearts by storm, and was triumphantly reunited to her lover at last.

I don't know how many young men in that audience were left without an atom of heart, how many would have given their two ears to be in handsome Landry Barbeaud's boots.

The roof nearly rose with the thunders of applause when the curtain fell, and Carl Walraven got up with the rest, his head whirling, his brain dizzy.

"Good Heaven!" he thought, stumbling along the dark, chilly streets to his hotel, "what a perfectly dazzling little witch she is! Was there ever such another sparkling, bewildering little fairy in the world before?"

Mr. Walraven spent the night in a fever of impatience. He was one of those men who, when they set their hearts on anything, find no peace, no rest, until they obtain it. He had come here partly through curiosity, partly because he dare not refuse Miriam; he had seen Mary Dane, and lo!

at first sight he was dazzled and bewitched.

Next morning, at breakfast, Mr. Walraven obtained all the information he desired concerning Miss Mollie Dane. Some half dozen of the actors were stopping at the hotel, and proved very willing, under the influence of brandy and water, to give the free-handed stranger Miss Dane's biography as far as they knew it.

She was just as charming off the stage as on; just as pretty, just as saucy, just as captivating. She was wild and full of tricks as an unbroken colt; but she was a thoroughly good girl, for all that, lavish of her money to all who needed, and snubbing lovers incontinently. She was stopping up the street at another hotel, and she would in all probability be easily accessible about noon.

The seedy, strolling players drank their diluted brandy, smoked their cigars, and told Mr. Walraven all this. They rather laughed at the New York millionaire when he was out of sight. He had fallen in love with pretty, blue-eyed Mollie, no doubt, and that was a very stale story with the shabby players.

Noon came, and, speckless and respectable to the last degree, Mr.

Walraven presented himself at the other hotel, and sent up his card with a waiter to Miss Dane.

The waiter ushered him into the hotel parlor, cold and prim as it is in the nature of hotel parlors to be. Mr. Walraven sat down and stared vaguely at the papered walls, rather at a loss as to what he should say to this piquant Mollie, and wondering how he would feel if she laughed at him.

"And she will laugh," he thought, with a mental groan; "she's the sort of girl that laughs at everything. And she may refuse, too; there is no making sure of a woman; and then what will Miriam say?"

He paused with a gasp. There was a quick patter of light feet down the stairs, the last two cleared with a jump, a swish of silken skirts, a little gush of perfume, and then, bright as a flash of light, blue-eyed Mollie stood before him. She held his card in her fingers, and all the yellow hair fell over her plump shoulders, like amber sunshine over snow.

"Mr. Carl Walraven?" Miss Dane said, with a smile and a graceful little bow.

Mr. Carl Walraven rose up and returned that pretty courtesy with a salute stiff and constrained.

"Yes, Miss Dane."

"Pray resume your seat, Mr. Walraven," with an airy wave of a little white hand. "To what do I owe this visit?"

She fluttered into a big black arm-chair as she spoke, folded the little white hands, and glanced across with brightly expectant eyes.

"You must think this call, from an utter stranger, rather singular, Miss Dane," Mr. Walraven began, considerably at a loss.

Miss Dane laughed.

"Oh, dear, no! not at all--the sort of thing I am used to, I a.s.sure you!

May I ask its purport?"

"Miss Dane, you must pardon me," said Mr. Walraven, plunging desperately head first into his mission, "but I saw you play last night, and I have--yes, I have taken a violent fancy to you."

Miss Mollie Dane never flinched. The wicked sparkle in the dancing eyes grew a trifle wickeder, perhaps, but that was all.

"Yes," she said, composedly; "go on."

"You take it very coolly," remarked the gentleman, rather taken aback himself. "You don't appear the least surprised."

"Of course not! I told you I was used to it. Never knew a gentleman of taste to see me play yet and not take a violent fancy to me. Pray go on."