"Exactly. I mean to keep things moving. Possibly by next Sunday I shall be within reach of the money which will enable us to marry and ensure our future happiness. Think how delightful that will be! We can't marry on ten shillings a week; after we're married I don't mean to stay on at the theatre, and so keep up a home for us both; and as for your emigrating--the chances are that we might never see each other again. And, anyhow, it might be years before you earned even a tenth part of five thousand pounds. So do be reasonable. I'm sure if you think it over you'll see perfectly well that my way is by far the best." It was some time before Mr Lamb was reasonable--from the lady's point of view. It is doubtful if to the end he saw as plainly as she would have liked him to, that her way was the best. But at that period of her career she had a way about her to which few men were capable of offering a prolonged resistance. Joe Lamb was distinctly not one of those few. By the time they parted she wrung from him what she told him plainly she intended to regard as his approbation of her nefarious schemes. So soon as his back was turned she wrote a stiff, formal note, in the third person, in which she informed Sir Frank Pickard that Miss Ailsa Lorraine would be at home to-morrow--Monday--afternoon at three o'clock and might be disposed to see him if he desired to call. "It's not exactly a nice sort of thing to do," she admitted to herself, as she secured this epistle in an envelope. "But it's the sort of opportunity which never may occur again; it seems wicked to throw it away. Especially as poor dear Joe never will be able to get the money by himself. I am convinced that he's just the sort of man to take advantage of a chance if he has one. And I love him well enough to get him one. And that's the whole truth in a nutshell." CHAPTER II