I looked away. The hurt, appealing look was in her eyes. It had come at last, and, upon my soul, I was as little prepared to repel it as when I entered the room hours ago after having lived in fear of it for hours before that. I looked away because I knew that I should do something rash if I were to lose my head for an instant. She was like an unhappy pleading child. I solemnly affirm that it was tender-heartedness that moved me in this crucial instant. What man could have felt otherwise? I assumed a coldly impersonal tone. "Not a single editorial in any of these papers holds you responsible for what happened in New York," I said. She began to collect the scattered newspaper clippings and the type-written transcriptions. I gathered up those in the corner and laid them in her lap. Her fingers trembled a little. "Throw them in the fireplace, please," she said in a low voice. "I kept them only for the purpose of showing them to you. Oh, how I hate, how I loathe it all!" When I came back from the fireplace, she was lying back in the big, comfortable chair, a careless, whimsical smile on her lips. She was as serene as if she had never known what it was to have a heart-pang or an instant of regret in all her life. I could not understand that side of her. "And now I have some pleasant news for you," she said. "My mother will be here on Thursday. You will not like her, of course, because you are already prejudiced, but I know she will like you." I knew I should hate her mother, but of course it would not do to say so. "Next Thursday?" I inquired. She nodded her head. "I hope she will like me," I added feeling that it was necessary. "She was a Colingraft, you know." "Indeed?" The Colingraft family was one of the oldest and most exclusive in New York. I had a vague recollection of hearing one of my fastidious friends at home say that it must have been a bitter blow to the Colingrafts when, as an expedient, she married the vulgarly rich Jasper Titus, then of St. Paul, Minnesota. It had been a clear case of marrying the money, not the man. Aline's marriage, therefore, was due to hereditary cold-bloodedness and not to covetousness. "A fine old name, Countess." "Titus suggests titles, therefore it has come to be our family name," she said, with her satiric smile. "You will like my father. He loves me more than any one else in the world--more than all the world. He is making the great fight for me, Mr. Smart. He would buy off the Count to-morrow if I would permit him to do so. Of late I have been thinking very seriously of suggesting it to him. It would be the simplest way out of our troubles, wouldn't it? A million is nothing to my father." "Nothing at all, I submit, in view of the fact that it may be the means of saving you from a term in prison for abducting Rosemary?" She paled. "Do you really think they would put me in prison?" "Unquestionably," I pronounced emphatically. "Oh, dear!" she murmured.