ire an answer," Mr. Faude called after him.

"No, sah; Mrs. Travilla say dere's no answer," returned Ben, looking back
for an instant from the doorway, then vanishing through it.

"All right!" muttered Clarence Augustus, opening the missive and glancing
over the contents; an angry flush suffusing his face, as he read.

"What is it? She hasn't declined, surely?" Mrs. Faude asked in an
undertone, close at his side.

"Just that; it's from the mother; thanks me for the invitation, but
respectfully declines; not even vouchsafing a shadow of an excuse. What
can it mean?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. But if they knew you had serious intentions--it
might make a difference."

"Possibly. I'll soon bring it to the proof."

He rose and went out in search of Mr. Travilla, found him alone, and at
once asked his permission to pay his addresses to Elsie.

The request was courteously, but decidedly and firmly refused.

"May I ask why?" queried the young man in anger and astonishment.

"Because, sir, it would not be agreeable to either my daughter herself, to
her mother or to me."

"Then I must say, sir, that you are all three hard to please. But pray,
sir, what is the objection?"

"Do you insist upon knowing?"

"I do, sir."

"Then let me answer your query with another. Would you pay your addresses
to a young woman--however wealthy, beautiful or high-born--whose moral
character was not better, whose life had been no purer than your own?"

"Of course not!" exclaimed Faude, coloring violently, "but who
expects----"

"I do, sir; I expect the husbands of my daughters to be as pure and
stainless as my sons' wives."

"I'm as good as the rest, sir. You'll not find one young fellow in five
hundred who has sowed fewer wild oats than I."

"I fear that may be true enough, but it does not alter my decision,"
returned Mr. Travilla, intimating by a bow and a slight wave of the hand,
that he considered the interview at an end.

Faude withdrew in anger, but with an intensified desire to secure the
coveted prize; the more difficult of acquisition, the more desirable it
seemed.

He persuaded his mother to become his advocate with Mrs. Travilla.

She at first flatly refused, but at length yielded to his entreaties, and
undertook the difficult, and to her haughty spirit, humiliating mission.

Requesting a private interview with Elsie, she told her of the wishes of
Clarence Augustus, and plead his cause with all the eloquence of which