"Her winsome, witching eyes Flash like bits of summer skies O'er her fan, As if to say, 'We've met; You may go now and forget-- If you can.'" SAMUEL M. PECK. It was a great relief to Geraldine when Harry Hawthorne arrived with a cab to take her to the boat. Now at last she could escape her angry lover. He rose, indeed, to take leave of the family, but he said to her: "I shall see you again, Miss Harding. I go back to New York on the same boat." He did so, but he did not judge it prudent to incur the wrath of Hawthorne by too persistent attentions. He preserved a coolly courteous demeanor toward both, devoting himself to some other friends whom he met on the boat. But, toward the last, he approached Geraldine again, murmuring, pleadingly: "I should like to call on you this evening, if you will permit me." She blushed, and stammered: "Please excuse me, as I have another engagement." He saw her timid glance turn toward Hawthorne, and readily guessed that she had made an engagement with him. Stifling an execration between closely drawn lips, he muttered: "To-morrow evening, then?" "Oh, yes, certainly," she answered, but with an air of restraint that made him furious. "She would like to refuse if she dared, the little flirt," he thought, and when Geraldine and Hawthorne left the boat together, he looked after them pale with rage. At that moment Cameron Clemens, one of the actor-friends he had met on the boat, slapped him on the shoulder, and said, teasingly: "Hallo, Standish! that was a stunning little beauty! But what are you glowering at, man? Jealous, eh?" "Jealous of a beggarly fireman? Bah, no! The little coquette will throw him over to-morrow." "And pick you up again, eh? Consolatory, by Jove! But who is she, anyhow?" "Oh, nobody but a salesgirl from O'Neill's. She scraped acquaintance with me in the store some ten days ago, and has been begging me to get her in my company ever since. You know how the pretty girls always run after actors, Clemens." "And how ardently the actors encourage their attentions; oh, yes," smiled the other, who was a very handsome young fellow himself. He added, after a moment: "Is the girl stage-struck?" "Yes, decidedly--member of an amateur dramatic society, and all that, you know. Wild to go on the stage, and I intend to get her in our company, just before we go on the road next week." "But there's no vacancy." "I'll get that little soubrette turned off. I owe her a grudge anyhow. She slapped my face when I tried to kiss her in a dark corridor one night." "Oh, don't take revenge for that. She's a good little girl, that Bettie," said Cameron Clemens, who, although he was the villain in the play where Standish had the part of hero, was kind and generous at heart. But Clifford Standish could not be brought to relent.