ondon?--not even sending a P.P.C. when you vanished from your
worshippers in Vanity Fair."

"As for my being here, it is simply a case of blind fate; as for my
friends, the only one I wanted to be sorry for my going was behind
earthworks which I could not scale in order to leave my card, or--or
anything else of more importance; and being left as it were to the
inclemency of a winter world, I fled from--"

She interrupted him. "What! the conqueror, you, flying from your
Moscow?"

He felt rather helpless under her gay raillery; but he said:

"Well, I didn't burn my kremlin behind me."

"Your kremlin?"

"My ships, then: they--they are just the same," he earnestly pleaded.
Foolish youth, to attempt to take such a heart by surprise and storm!

"That is very interesting," she said, "but hardly wise. To make
fortunes and be happy in new countries, one should forget the old ones.
Meditation is the enemy of action."

"There's one meditation could make me conquer the North Pole, if I could
but grasp it definitely."

"Grasp the North Pole? That would be awkward for your friends and
gratifying to your enemies, if one may believe science and history. But,
perhaps, you are in earnest after all, poor fellow! for my father tells
me you are going over the hills and far away to the moose-yards.
How valiant you are, and how quickly you grasp the essentials of
fortune-making!"

"Miss Malbrouck, I am in earnest, and I've always been in earnest in one
thing at least. I came out here to make money, and I've made some, and
shall make more; but just now the moose are as brands for the burning,
and I have a gun sulky for want of exercise."

"What an eloquent warrior-temper! And to whom are your deeds of valour
to be dedicated? Before whom do you intend to lay your trophies of the
chase?"

"Before the most provoking but worshipful lady that I know."

"Who is the sylvan maid? What princess of the glade has now the homage
of your impressionable heart, Mr. Thorne?"

And Gregory Thorne, his native insolence standing him in no stead, said
very humbly:

"You are that sylvan maid, that princess--ah, is this fair to me, is it
fair, I ask you?"

"You really mean that about the trophies"? she replied. "And shall you
return like the mighty khans, with captive tigers and lions, led by
stalwart slaves, in your train, or shall they be captive moose or
grizzlies?"

"Grizzlies are not possible here," he said, with cheerful seriousness,
"b