When Edith assumed this tone toward him, she might well have made him promise to perform miracles. She was too intent upon her benevolent scheme to heed the possible inferences which he might draw from her sudden display of interest. “Then you promise?” repeated she, eagerly, as he hesitated to answer. “Yes, I promise.” “Now, you must not be surprised; but mamma and I have made arrangements with Mr. S---- that you are to appear under his auspices at a concert which is to be given a week from to-night. All our friends are going, and we shall take up all the front seats, and I have already told my gentlemen friends to scatter through the audience, and if they care anything for my favor, they will have to applaud vigorously.” Halfdan reddened up to his temples, and began to twist his watch-chain nervously. “You must have small confidence in my ability,” he murmured, “since you resort to precautions like these.” “But my dear Mr. Birch,” cried Edith, who was quick to discover that she had made a mistake, “it is not kind in you to mistrust me in that way. If a New York audience were as highly cultivated in music as you are, I admit that my precautions would be superfluous. But the papers, you know, will take their tone from the audience, and therefore we must make use of a little innocent artifice to make sure of it. Everything depends upon the success of your first public appearance, and if your friends can in this way help you to establish the reputation which is nothing but your right, I am sure you ought not to bind their hands by your foolish sensitiveness. You don’t know the American way of doing things as well as I do, therefore you must stand by your promise, and leave everything to me.” It was impossible not to believe that anything Edith chose to do was above reproach. She looked so bewitching in her excited eagerness for his welfare that it would have been inhuman to oppose her. So he meekly succumbed, and began to discuss with her the programme for the concert. During the next week there was hardly a day that he did not read some startling paragraph in the newspapers about “the celebrated Scandinavian pianist,” whose appearance at S---- Hall was looked forward to as the principal event of the coming season. He inwardly rebelled against the well-meant exaggerations; but as he suspected that it was Edith’s influence which was in this way asserting itself in his behalf, he set his conscience at rest and remained silent.