do his for him? Can you trust me if I promise to take an immediate impression of this key, and have one made for myself, which shall insure my return here?” “My dear,” she said, taking my head between her two trembling hands, “I have never looked upon a sweeter face than my daughter’s till I looked upon yours to-day. If you bid me hope, I will hope, and if you bid me trust, I will trust. The remembrance of this kiss will not let you forget.” And she embraced me in a warm and tender manner. “I will write you,” I murmured. “Some day look for a billet under the door. It will tell you what to do; now I must go back to my husband.” And, with a sudden access of fear, caused by my dread of meeting his eyes with this hidden knowledge between us, I hastened out and locked the door behind me. When I reached the office, I was in a fainting condition, but all my hopes revived again when I saw the vest still hanging where I had left it, and heard my husband’s voice singing cheerfully in the adjoining room. CHAPTER VI. WHILE OTHERS DANCED. I CANNOT enter into the feelings of this dreadful time. I do not know if I loved or hated the man I had undertaken to save. I only know I was determined to bring light out of darkness in a way that would compromise nobody, possibly not even myself. But to do this I must dazzle him into giving me a great pleasure. A crowd in the ------ Street house was necessary to the quiet escape of Mrs. Ransome and her daughter; so a crowd we must have, and how have a crowd without giving a grand party? I knew that this would be a shocking proposition to him, but I was prepared to meet all objections; and when, with every nerve alert and every charm exerted to its utmost, I sat down at his side that evening to plead my cause, I knew by the sparkle of his eye and the softening of the bitter lines that sometimes hardened his mouth, that the battle was half won before I spoke, and that I should have my party whatever it might cost him in mental stress and worry. Perhaps he was glad to find me given over to folly at a time when he was waiting for a miracle to release him from the net of crime in which he had involved himself; perhaps he merely thought it would please me, and aid him to thus strengthen our position in the social world before taking our flight to a foreign land; but whatever lay at the bottom of his amenity, he gave me _carte blanche_ that night for an entertainment that should embrace all his friends and mine and some of Mrs. Vandyke’s. So I saw that doubt removed.