-I could see that."

"And did you wait for her to go out to lunch?"

"No, I had an engagement. Next day I caught that same car, but she was
not on it. I kept on trying and the fourth day she was on the car,
looking lovelier than ever. When she got off the car I got off. I
stepped up and raised my hat.

"'Forgive me for approaching you in this impertinent manner,' I said,
'but I would like to introduce myself,' and I handed her my card."

The youthful head of the house of Gladwin stopped abruptly and slid
listlessly into a chair.

"I demand to hear what she replied," insisted Barnes.

"It wasn't just what she said," mused Gladwin, "though that was bad
enough, but it was the way she said it. These were her exact words,
'Go on, yer fresh slob, an' sneak yer biscuits!' How does that suit
you for exploding a romance?"

"Blown to powder and bits," murmured Whitney Barnes, sombrely. "Sorry
you told me this--never mind why--but there's one thing I've been
wanting to ask you for a long time: How about that girl you rescued
from drowning four years ago? I remember it made you quite famous at
the time. According to all standards of romance, you should have
married her."

Travers Gladwin looked up with a wry smile.

"Did you ever see the lady?" he asked sharply.

"No. Wasn't she pretty?"

"She was a brunette."

"You don't fancy brunettes?"

"She was a dark brunette."

"Dark?"

"Yes, from Africa."

"That was tough luck!" exclaimed Barnes without cracking a smile.

CHAPTER X.

THE HEARTBEATS OF MR. HOGG.

In a magnificently furnished apartment on Madison avenue, which Mrs.
Elvira Burton had rented for New York's winter season, that augustly
beautiful or beautifully august lady sat writing. I may say that she
was writing grimly and that there was Jovian determination stamped
upon her high, broad forehead and indented at the corners of her tense
lips.

She had just returned from a consultation with two matrons of the same
stern fibre as herself. No group of gray-bearded physicians had ever
weighed the fate of a patient with more attention to pathological
detail than had Mrs. Burton and her two friends weighed the fate of
Helen Burton, but whereas it rarely happens that pork is prescribed in
a delicate case, the result of that petticoated conclave was that Hogg
was prescribed for the flower-like ward of the leader of Omaha's
socially elect.

While Mrs. Burton had done most of the talking, her two fr