It was a warning that Miss Pim, in a periodic spasm of alarm, was spreading dismay through the two houses in her progress in search of long-deferred rents. "Horrors!" exclaimed Winona Horning. She sprang to the door which gave into her room, ready to use it as an escape from either attack. "Twice this week. Um-m--means business!" said Doré solemnly. "I'm three weeks behind. How are you?" "Five!" "We must get busy," said Doré pensively. "I have just two dollars in sight!" "Two? You're a millionaire!" "The champagne will bring something," said Doré, fingering the basket, "but I can't let it go until Mr. Peavey--If he'd only call up for to-night! Zip might take the perfume, but I need it so! Worse luck, the flowers have all come from the wrong places. There's twenty dollars there, if it were only Pouffé. And look at this!" She went to her bureau, and opening a little drawer, held up a bank-note. "Fifty dollars!" exclaimed Winona, amazed. "Ridiculous, isn't it?" said Doré, with a laugh, shutting it up again. "Joe Gilday had the impertinence to slip it in there, after I had refused a loan!" "What! Angry for that?" said Winona, carried away by the famine the money had awakened in her. "Certainly I am!" said Doré energetically. "Do you think I'd allow a man to give me money--like that?" This ethical point might have been discussed, but at the moment a knock broke in upon the conversation. The two girls started, half expecting to behold Miss Pim's military figure advancing into the room. "Who is it?" said Doré anxiously. "It's Stacey," said a docile voice. "Shall I go?" inquired Winona, with a gesture. "No, no--stay! Always stay!" said Doré, hastily stuffing back the overflowing contents of a trunk and signaling Winona to close the lid nearest her. Stacey Van Loan crowded into the room. He was a splendid grenadier type of man, with the smiling vacant face of a boy. He wore shoes for which he paid thirty dollars, a suit that cost a hundred, a great fur coat that cost eight times more, enormous fur gloves, and a large pearl pin in his cravat. On entering, he always blushed twice, the first as an apology and the second for having blushed before. The most captious Salamander would have accepted him at a glance as the beau ideal of a prop--a perfect blend of radiating expensiveness and docile timidity. Van Loan Senior, of the steel nobility of Pennsylvania, had insisted on his acquiring a profession after two unfortunate attempts at collegiate culture, and had exiled him to New York to study law, allotting him twenty thousand dollars a year to defray necessary expenses. "Bingo! what a knock-out!" said Stacey, gazing open-mouthed, heels together, at the glowing figure that greeted him. Doré, who had certain expectations as to his arrival, perceiving that he held one hand concealed behind his back, broke into smiles. "You sly fellow, what are you hiding there?" "All right?" said Van Loan, with an anxious gulp. "How about it?"