Not care for you! Why, Royal, I worship the rug you tread on."

That girl was Fanny Price.

"No," he answered in reply to his mother's question. The answer was
strangely truthful. Fanny Price had tantalized him greatly.
Semi-continuously he had thought of her for a long time. But not
matrimonially. To him matrimony meant always one woman more and
usually one man less. He had no wish to dwindle. When he was fifty he
might, perhaps, to make a finish, marry some girl who wanted to begin.
But that unselfishness was remote. He was quite young; what is worse,
he was abominably good-looking. Fancy Aramis in a Piccadilly coat.
That was the way he looked. His features were chiseled. On his lip was
a mustache so slight that it might have been made with a crayon. His
hair was black. His eyes were blue. Where they were not blue they were
white, very white. They were wonderful eyes. With them he had done a
great deal of execution.

At the time they rather haunted a young woman who moved in another
sphere and whose acquaintance he had made quite adventurously. The
name of this young woman was Marie Durand. It was of the latter, not
of Fanny Price, that he was thinking.

"No," he repeated. "But was it for Annandale that you asked her for
tonight?"

"How perfectly absurd of you, Royal. Have you forgotten that he is in
love with Sylvia? I asked her partly for you, partly for Orr."

"Is he coming too! Good Lord! it is going to be ghastly."

But at the side of the room a portiere was being drawn and a servant
announced:

"Miss Waldron."

With the charming manner of the thoroughbred New York girl a young
woman entered. She was tall, willowy, with a face such as those one
used to see in keepsakes--delightful things which now, like so many
other delightful things, are seen no more.

As she approached Mrs. Loftus, who had risen to greet her, she made a
little courtesy.

"Sylvia, this is so dear of you. And is your mother very well?"

Again the portiere was drawn. A voice announced:

"Miss Price."

Then there appeared a girl adorably constructed--constructed, too, to
be adored. She was slight and very fair. Her mouth resembled the red
pulp of some flower of flesh. Her eyes were pools of purple, her hair
a turban of gold.

Cannibalistically Loftus looked the delicious apparition up and down.
He could have eaten it.

"Mr. Annandale," the voice announced.

A man, big and blond, with a cavalry mustache and an amiable, aimles