She saw that the caller was a very fine-looking man--young, tall, handsome, clean-shaven, and wearing protecting glasses over penetrating dark eyes. “I am Reed Raymond, madam, and I called in answer to your ad in the evening paper,” he said, with a very courtly bow. “It is fortunate you came at this time, for my husband feels very dull this evening,” she answered, adding: “It is for him a companion is desired. He is a helpless cripple, who chafes always against his fate, and I must own that at times he is a most irritable person. But who could blame him--condemned to so sad an existence in the bloom of manhood! What he needs is a bright, cheerful young man, cultured, acquainted with the world.” “I can furnish unexceptionable references from Lord Werter, with whom I have traveled the past five months,” the handsome applicant assured the lady. “I think I will introduce you to--my husband, as he, after all, will be the one to decide on your availability,” said Daisie, rising and motioning the young man to come. He bowed, and followed her into the hall, thinking to himself that she was certainly the rarest beauty that had ever dawned on his horizon. “How cruel to lose such a woman! No wonder!” he was thinking, when his eyes were arrested by another vision of beauty, trailing down the grand staircase toward him--no less a person than Annette Janowitz, sparkling, radiant, in rose-pink satin and pearls. “I am all ready, Daisie, dear!” she cried, in her musical young voice, and the listener reeled backward against the wall, with his hand upon his heart. “Ah, what is the matter?” cried Daisie, in alarm. Reed Raymond soon recovered himself, and answered, with a pallid smile: “I beg pardon--it is nothing. I am--subject--to slight spasms of the heart.” And he staggered on with her into the library, not daring to glance back at the radiant vision on the stairway, while he groaned to himself: “Who would have thought of meeting her here? Yet now I remember that Dallas Bain once told me she was Daisie Bell’s dearest friend.” At that moment Mrs. Fleming entered, exclaiming: “Well, girls, are you all ready?” “’Sh-h, Mrs. Fleming! Daisie is taking a stranger into the library.” “Who is he, Patrick?” “He came to answer the ad for master’s companion, madam.” “Come, Annette, let us follow, and see if he will suit Royall,” cried the volatile little widow, snatching Annette’s hand and dragging her along. “Mrs. Fleming, Miss Janowitz, Mr. Raymond,” said Daisie, and they all bowed formally, the gentleman standing at the back of Royall’s chair, superb in manly dignity. “Stunning!” whispered the widow to Annette. But the young girl had grown suddenly very pale and still. She waited silently, her bosom heaving under its pearls, her eyes downcast beneath their jetty fringes, until Mrs. Fleming tittered: “Well, we must be going, girls. Ta, ta, Royall; so glad you like my new Paris gown. You must try to exist without Daisie a few hours, will you?”