“This gives an added zest to our trip,” laughed Ballou, who was always ready for anything which promised excitement. “Will you walk over to meet the incoming train with us?” addressing Dinsmore. “No,” replied John, almost wearily, “I will sit here and smoke my cigar, as a sort of nerve steadier.” “I advise you strongly to think not twice but a score of times ere you make up your mind to throw up a handsome fortune simply because there is a string tied to it in the shape of a pretty young girl, for no doubt she is pretty. Young girls cannot well help being sweet and comely, I have discovered.” John Dinsmore watched his friends walk away, and as they vanished into the thick, dark gloom he gave himself up to his own dreary thoughts. The story he had just heard, thrilling though it was, quickly vanished from his mind, as did also the fortune that might be his for the claiming. All he could think of was the lovely young girl upon whom he had set his heart and soul--his very life, as it were--who had spurned him so contemptuously and for one whom he could not think worthy of such a treasure, as he still blindly believed Queenie Trevalyn to be. He had not been thrown into Raymond Challoner’s society much, and from what little John Dinsmore did see of him he had not formed a very favorable impression. He had heard that his wine bills were quite a little fortune in themselves, and on several occasions, when in the midst of a crowd of young men in the office, who were as fast and gay as himself, John Dinsmore had heard him boast of his conquests with fair women, and of episodes so rollicking in their nature that John Dinsmore, man of honor as he was, reverencing all womankind, would arise abruptly from his seat, throw down the paper he had been vainly endeavoring to read, and walk away with a frown and unmistakable contempt in his face as he turned away from Challoner’s direction, going beyond the hearing of his voice and hilarious tales. If any other man had won the treasure that cruel fate denied to him he could have endured the blow better; but Challoner! “Ah! Heaven grant that she shall never have cause to rue her choice,” he ruminated. In the midst of his musing he was interrupted by the voice of the very man upon whom his thoughts were bent--Raymond Challoner. It had been an hour or more since he had parted from the girl who had just promised to be his bride. The lights of the grand ballroom were out, and the greater portion of the great hotel was wrapped in gloom, with but here and there the twinkling light in the windows of some belated guest, and these, too, were rapidly disappearing, leaving the world to darkness and itself. It was the hour when the sports of Newport banded together to smoke their cigars and talk over their wine, and their revelry usually lasted far into the wee sma’ hours. To-night these young men seemed bent upon having a royal good time together, in celebration of their last night at the famous resort.