“What absurd nonsense,” she cried. “Why, he has never been anything more to me than a mere acquaintance,” and she polluted her lips with a second lie when she went on smoothly: “Papa paid him for the service he rendered me in that elevator affair, and that ended any obligation on my part. Furthermore, I must say that you do not compliment my taste very highly to imagine for an instant that I could possibly fall in love with such a dark-browed, plebeian-appearing man as Mr. John Dinsmore! The very thought that you could have imagined so mortifies me exceedingly.” “There, there, Queenie, do not take it to heart so. Of course you couldn’t; only he followed you about so constantly that I own I was furiously jealous, and thought seriously of calling him out to mortal combat. Now that I do consider it soberly, I agree with you that he is hardly the type of man to inspire love in a young girl’s romantic heart, despite his bushy whiskers and melancholy air. But let us waste no more words upon him. We can spend the fleeting hours much more advantageously by talking of love and our future.” They walked away laughing, arm in arm, leaving the man on the other side of the pillar sitting there like one carved in stone. The heart in his bosom had seemed to break with one awful throb, rendering him almost lifeless, and thus his friends found him when they came out to search for him an hour later. “Did you think our hour an unusually long one?” laughed Gaines, adding, before his friend had time to reply: “I have now another commission on my hands which is far more important than writing up the grand ball. Shortly after leaving you I received a lengthy telegram from our editor, ordering me to wait over instead of taking the midnight train back to New York, as was first arranged, to meet one of Pinkerton’s men, who ought to arrive here at any hour now. “It seems that he is in search of a young fellow who is giving the police here, there and everywhere no end of trouble. He is a high-flyer with expectations, and taking advantage of future prospects, has gone in heavy--borrowing money, gambling, and even forging for big amounts. He appeared suddenly in Saratoga one day last week, at the races, and was one of the most desperate plungers at the track. The climax to his rapid career is he had a furious encounter with a man that night, who had won large sums on the track, and the upshot of the affair was the man was found murdered in the early dawn of the following morning, and the only clew which could lead to the identity of the perpetrator of the deed is the imprint of a ring of most peculiar design upon the temple of the victim--a triangle, set with stones, diamonds presumably, with a large stone in the center. This is the only clew Pinkerton’s man is following, since the descriptions differ so radically.”