"Dear, no!" she answered, without the least hesitation. "How should I have time for such things? I am always busy, you know." "Spoiling your pretty hands with rough housework!" "Ah, but I remember what you said the other day, and am going to take great care of my nails. And mother always taught me to wear gloves in housework." "Don't you sometimes want to go back to England?" Such a transfiguration took place in her face at the words! Her eyes shone, her cheeks flushed, her lips quivered. "Ah!" she whispered, "I try not to think how much I want to go back there!" "Would you thank any one who would take you?" "As a governess, do you mean? But it would put papa to such expense if I were to leave him. And I think--I think there is something or some one that prevents his ever going back there at all." "But if, for your sake, some one came forward and paid all your father's debts, and provided for him comfortably, and then sailed away with you in one of those nice white-funnelled steamers, and gave you a beautiful home in England, and surrounded you with everything that money and forethought could provide, and all for love of you, what would you say?" "Why, who would do such a thing?" "Some one who is very fond of you. Some one not very good, but who believes you could make him better by your sweet influence. Some one whose home is very lonely without a bright-faced Laline to look after things, and to sing about the house as I have heard you sing at the Rue Planché. Some one who loves you, Laline." She stared into his face with wondering eyes which betrayed no self-consciousness. "It sounds like a fairy-tale," she said. "It is true, all the same. You are Cinderella, and I am a degenerate Fairy Prince, Laline!" CHAPTER V. Thus far had Wallace Armstrong proceeded in his unique love-making, when the lady he meant to wed in a few days' time disconcerted him by bursting into a hearty peal of laughter. "Look at my hand," she said, pulling off her glove and showing a soft pink palm. "I had my fortune told several months ago, and I am not to fall in love until I am years older than I am now." "Give me your hand," he said. "I know something of palmistry, too." This statement was absolutely untrue. But, as he meant to leave no means untried to gain his end, and could see that the girl half believed in the fortune told by her hand, he resolved to practise on her childish credulity and superstition. In truth, he did not know one line from another, and could only decide that it was a nice soft girl's hand and eminently kissable. "Show me your line of fate!" he said, peremptorily. Laline eagerly pointed it out. "As I suspected," he said, crumpling her hand together to emphasise the lines and looking absorbed in the study of them; "very early in your career you fall under the influence of a man of far stronger will than yours. His line of fate and yours run side by side, and only death can separate them!"