their natural prey. I see the ghost of a
smile flickering about your lips, Miss Wallen, and am aware you regard
my mission with disfavor, but you cannot and shall not treat it with
contempt."

She was smiling, poor girl, and it was but the ghost of a wintry smile,
too, for, even in her exasperation and distress, the whimsical,
humorous side of her nature--its helpful, sunny side--was asserting
itself at the moment. For the life of her she could not feel the
indignation he deserved just then, for the contrast between the
grandiloquence of his sentiments and the pettiness of that unpaid
lodging-bill almost forced her to laugh outright.

"I am here," he went on, "because you would not believe my statements
regarding Mr. Forrest, because I feel it my duty to open your eyes as to
his character and intentions. You refused to believe what I said
concerning him and you, and that only confirms my fears. I am powerless
to contend against the logic of a woman's love, but when I spoke of him
and her whom I may be pardoned for referring to as your rival, I spoke
the truth."

Now she was smiling in contemptuous amusement again, as though she
actually considered it beneath her to answer. How amazed would Miss
Allison be at the idea of her being placed on the same plane with a
working-girl!

Her silence and self-control maddened Elmendorf. "Have you no reason, no
sense?" he demanded. "I told you this very day that she had gone to
follow and bring him back, did I not?"

A cool nod of assent.

"I told you he would reappear here, if at all, only as her husband, or
possibly her affianced, did I not?"

Another nod as cool as the first.

"And you turned away in contemptuous unbelief, did you not?"

"Contempt certainly, but unbelief--not entirely."

Elmendorf was fairly trembling with wrath by this time. The idea that
this simple, unlettered, friendless "girl of the people" should so
coolly brave him--him on whose words enraptured ears were wont to hang,
at whose eloquence enthusiastic hundreds burst into applause! It stung
him to the very marrow of his conceit. Something must be said or done to
bring her to her knees, and, believing that she loved and dearly loved
the man in question, he prepared his final _coup_.

"Well, it may modify your contempt to know that my words have come
true."

"That Mr. Forrest was ordered away in disgrace?" she calmly asked.

"Not so much that, as that he has returned, brought back, as I said,