This was very embarrassing. Had he said he loved her, and at first sight, she would have turned him away. She would have distrusted both his sincerity and his motives. But he did not say this. On the contrary, he offered in explicit terms, it would seem, not to say it. She therefore naturally took refuge in generalities. "But what you ask won't be possible. What would people say? This is a very bad, a scandalous country, I mean. What would Miss De Montague think, or Mr. Bellario?" "What people will say or think hardly needs to be considered," said Harding steadily, "since in a week I shall have gone to my home in the mines. You won't be troubled with me long--twice more perhaps. Only once if you prefer it. All shall be exactly as you wish it. Is not that fair?" Miss Tinsel was saved the present necessity for replying to a question or coping with a situation both of which she found extremely perplexing, since at this juncture the door opened and admitted the "Queen of the Fairy Bower" and the "Blood-Red Demon," who had apparently been out for a morning walk. To Harding's surprise, the "Queen" was a motherly looking woman of forty-five and the "Demon" a weak-eyed young man, with a pasty white face, and some fifteen years younger. Both were much overdressed, and both stared vigorously at Harding--the "Queen" with an air intended to represent fashionable raillery, the "Demon" with haughty surprise. But the visitor avoided explanations that might have been embarrassing by bowing low to the company and passing from the room. CHAPTER III. THE CUP AND THE LIP. Her real name was Jane Green. But Jane Green would never do for the play-bill; so the manager, exercising his peculiar and traditional prerogative, had rechristened the young lady for the histrionic world, and she appeared as "Aurora Tinsel." A poor, almost friendless girl, she had left the Atlantic States with an aunt who had been the wife of the "property man" in the theatre. Soon after the aunt died, and Jane had gladly accepted the offer of Miss De Montague to live with her, and, by helping that lady with her dresses, to render an equivalent for her society and protection. Harding was a wise man in his generation, foolish as in some respects he may appear. We offer no explanation of his swift and unreasoning infatuation, because it is just such men who do just such rash and impulsive things. But he was sagacious enough to know that a man who really wants a woman is less likely to get her by being too quick than even by being too slow. Women who are interested always maintain the contrary; but this is because they want to bag their game instantly, whether they mean to throw it away afterward or not. The sex are not apt, however, to err by over-rating the value of what they get too easily, and this Harding was philosopher enough to know.