larks' when we
discuss the 'proposition.' You have a quick mind, Miss De Ormond. Two
months ago some half-dozen of us went in a motor-car for a day's run
into the country. We stopped at a road-house for dinner. My cousin
proposed marriage to you then and there. He was influenced to do so, of
course, by the beauty and charm which no one can deny that you possess."

"I wish I had you for a press agent, Mr. Carteret," said the beauty,
with a dazzling smile.

"You are on the stage, Miss De Ormond," went on Black-Tie. "You have
had, doubtless, many admirers, and perhaps other proposals. You must
remember, too, that we were a party of merrymakers on that occasion.
There were a good many corks pulled. That the proposal of marriage
was made to you by my cousin we cannot deny. But hasn't it been your
experience that, by common consent, such things lose their seriousness
when viewed in the next day's sunlight? Isn't there something of a
'code' among good 'sports'--I use the word in its best sense--that
wipes out each day the follies of the evening previous?"

"Oh yes," said Miss De Ormond. "I know that very well. And I've always
played up to it. But as you seem to be conducting the case--with the
silent consent of the defendant--I'll tell you something more. I've got
letters from him repeating the proposal. And they're signed, too."

"I understand," said Black-Tie gravely. "What's your price for the
letters?"

"I'm not a cheap one," said Miss De Ormond. "But I had decided to make
you a rate. You both belong to a swell family. Well, if I _am_ on the
stage nobody can say a word against me truthfully. And the money is only
a secondary consideration. It isn't the money I was after. I--I believed
him--and--and I liked him."

She cast a soft, entrancing glance at Blue-Tie from under her long
eyelashes.

"And the price?" went on Black-Tie, inexorably.

"Ten thousand dollars," said the lady, sweetly.

"Or--"

"Or the fulfillment of the engagement to marry."

"I think it is time," interrupted Blue-Tie, "for me to be allowed to say
a word or two. You and I, cousin, belong to a family that has held its
head pretty high. You have been brought up in a section of the country
very different from the one where our branch of the family lived. Yet
both of us are Carterets, even if some of our ways and theories differ.
You remember, it is a tradition of the family, that no Carteret ever
failed in chivalry to a lady or failed to keep h