"You had better eat your supper," said Haidee, not caring to recall that day, for she still harbored a furious resentment against the girl on the score of it, and often felt tempted to wreak revenge upon her. "You had better eat your supper, for old Peter will be angry with you if you keep him waiting outside the door so long." "Take the bread away. I cannot eat any to-night," answered Lily, with a hopeless sigh. CHAPTER XX. The autumn sunlight fell goldenly on the handsome face and form of Lancelot Darling as he stood on the broad marble steps of the grand hotel where he boarded, his glance roving carelessly up and down the crowded street. Our hero was that _rara avis_ whose species is almost extinct at the present day--a young man of wealth and fashion, yet totally unspoiled by the flattery and adulation of the world. Carefully raised by judicious parents, whom he had unhappily lost by death in the dawn of manhood, he had been shielded from many temptations that would have assailed one less carefully guarded than this only and beloved child of fond and doting parental care. Enjoying the possession of an almost princely fortune, which precluded the need of work, one would have thought him liable to be whirled into the maelstrom of vice and dissipation, and engulfed in its fatal whirlpool forever. But such was not the case. He was only twenty-three when he met and loved the beautiful Lily Lawrence, and her love had been to him a talisman and safeguard against evil. Even now, amid the total wreck of all his hopes, and the despair that filled his own being, he was no less the pure-hearted man and perfect gentleman than when the happiness of Lily's love had crowned his life with bliss. As he stood there on the marble steps he did not note the many admiring glances that fell on him from passers-by--the appreciative looks of women whose gaze lingered on the tall, elegant figure and handsome face, nor the approving nod of men who, while they made no endeavor to reach his lofty standard, could yet admire him as a gentleman "_sans peur et sans reproche_." While he stood thus abstracted a boy approached, and placing in his hand a delicate envelope, scented with heliotrope, turned away. Lancelot turned the envelope in his hand for a moment in some surprise, for the writing was unfamiliar. In a moment he tore it open, however, and read these few lines on the perfumed sheet: "MY DEAR FRIEND:--I enclose a list of some new songs which I wish to try. Will you do me the favor to select them for me, and bring them up this afternoon? "Yours faithfully, "ETHEL VANCE." This was a bold move on the part of the fascinating widow. She knew perfectly well that she could have sent the boy to a music store and secured the songs at less trouble than by entrusting the commission to Lancelot Darling.