can give you a happy life, and
a few of the beautiful things you deserve, why, it's _something_!
Besides, I'm going to worship my princess. I'd give anything to show you
how I--but no. I was good before, when I was tempted to kiss you. You're
at my mercy now, in a way, all the more because I'm taking you from your
old existence to one you don't know.

"I sha'n't ask to kiss you--except maybe your little hand if you don't
mind--until the moment you're my wife. Meantime, I'll try to grow a bit
more like what your lover ought to be; and later I shall kiss you enough
to make up for lost time."

If, five hours ago, any one had told Annesley Grayle that she would wish
to have a strange man take her in his arms and kiss her she would have
felt insulted. Yet so it was. She was sorry that he was so scrupulous.
She longed to have him hold her against his heart.

The thought thrilled her like an electric shock a thousand times more
powerful than the tingling which had flashed up her arm at the first
touch of his hand, though even that had seemed terrifying then. But she
sat still in her corner of the taxi, and gave him no answer, lest she
should betray herself.

Her silence, after the warmth of his words, seemed cold. Perhaps he felt
it so, for he went on after an instant's pause, as if he had waited for
something in vain, and his tone was changed. Annesley thought it, by
contrast, almost businesslike.

"You mustn't be afraid," he said, "that I mean to stay at the Savoy
myself. Even if I'd been stopping there, I should move if I were going to
put you in the hotel. But I have my own lair in London. I've been over
here a number of times. Indeed, I'm partly English, born in Canada,
though I've spent most of my life in the United States. Nobody at the
Savoy but the Countess de Santiago knows who I am, and she'll understand
that it may be convenient for me to change my name. Nelson Smith is a
respectable one, and she'll respect it!

"Now, my plan is to ask for her (she'll be in by this time), have a few
words of explanation on the quiet, not to embarrass you; and the Countess
will do the rest. She'll engage a room for you next to her own suite, or
as near as possible; then you'll be provided with a chaperon."

"I'm not anxious about myself, but about you," Annesley said. "You
haven't told me yet what happened after you went upstairs at Mrs.
Ellsworth's, and how you knew those men were gone. I suppose you did
know? Or--did you c