Mme. Lorraine would have been chagrined indeed could she but have known what was transpiring in the house she had quitted so precipitately upon finding out that she was in danger of arrest upon suspicion of knowing the whereabouts of Eliot Van Zandt.

The despised Little Nobody was installed in madame's own luxurious chamber, with a capable elderly woman in attendance. Eliot Van Zandt occupied another room, equally elegant, and Carmontelle and Markham had also installed themselves temporarily in a guest-chamber. In the kitchen a temporary cook held sway until such time as the young journalist could be moved to his hotel. Just now he was prostrated on a bed of sickness, having suffered a relapse from the reopening of his wound through his exertions in hallooing and singing.

The cause of the slight wound upon his arm, which they had found freshly bleeding, he steadily declined to explain.

"It is a mere nothing—the scratch of a pen," he said, carelessly, and indeed it very soon healed. The wound on his breast was doing nicely, too, and he began to talk of leaving for home very soon—as soon as he was able to travel.

Carmontelle had written to his anxious sisters to calm their uneasy minds, and one day—it was a week after that tragic evening when he had rescued the prisoners—he held a very serious conversation with his friend over the subject of Little Nobody's future.

Van Zandt had sat up in an easy-chair that day for the first time, and Marie had come in to see him. She looked bright and well again, and the young man shuddered as he thought how near she had been to death that night in the underground prison.

"But for my timely thought, my terrible experiment, she must have been dead ere rescue came," he said to himself. "But she must never know. Perhaps she would shrink from me in horror did she but know the truth."

Carmontelle had been very quiet while she remained in the room. He had watched both narrowly. When she had gone, he said, gravely:

"Van Zandt, let us speak together as good men and true. Have you taken any thought for the little ma'amselle's future?"

Van Zandt started and grew a shade paler. He scarcely understood this abruptness, this seriousness.

"Her future?" he echoed, a little blankly. "I thought—I understood—that it was all planned out that night when we saved her. You were to educate her—afterward to make her your wife."

Carmontelle frowned, and said, sternly:

"Yes—but of course you understand that the plan is untenable now?"

He looked straight into Van Zandt's beautiful blue-gray eyes with such a meaning expression that in a moment there rushed over the young man's mind a comprehension of the truth. Flushing darkly, he exclaimed:

"Say no more. I understand you now," hoarsely; "you mean that—that noble child is—is compromised by her imprisonment with me those four long days?"

Carmontelle, with a fierce throb of jealousy at his heart, answered:

"Yes."

Then, after a moment's blank silence on both sides, he added, sighing heavily:

"Such is the cruel way of the world. For myself, Van Zandt, I know you are the soul of honor, chivalrous as the men of the South; and I can pay you no higher compliment than this. For her, I know she is pure as an angel. But—there is the cruel, carping world ready to point the finger of scorn always, and I—warmly as I love the girl—I could not have a bride of whom gossip could whisper even one blighting suspicion. The Carmontelles are very proud of their unblemished honor. I must not be the first to smirch it. I could have passed over her birth, her namelessness, for I could have given her my own proud name, and lifted her to my own station; but—this shadow from her misfortune in having shared your imprisonment is too dark for me to bear. My hopes are in ashes. Instead of being her husband, I must now claim the place of a father or a brother."

It was a long speech for Carmontelle, who did not ordinarily deal in long sentences. When it was finished he wiped the great drops of moisture from his brow and waited for Van Zandt to speak.

He did not have to wait long.

"I understand you," the young man said, with apparent quietude. "The generous child, by her nobility in coming to seek and to save me, sacrificed her own future. I must—marry her—to appease the proprieties."

With a quiver of pain and regret in his voice, Carmontelle said, gravely:

"Yes."

"I am ready to make her that poor reparation for all that she sacrificed for me," Van Zandt answered, instantly, and for a moment their hands met in a firm, close grip. Then the Southerner said sadly:

"My God, there is no other way, or I could not give up the sweet hopes that for a few hours delighted my soul. But we have talked it over at the club—my friends and hers—and have all agreed that since the whole affair was so widely known, there could be no other way out of it in honor for that poor child than by marriage with you. Van Zandt, you look strange! Do you take it so hard, then? Great Heaven! can it be that you have some prior engagement?"

"I am free—except from the claims of two young sisters, and the trammels of poverty," Van Zandt answered, quietly.

"Poverty, yes, I had thought of that; but she shall not be a burden to you. I am rich, very rich. I will pay the poor child's dowry. I will make it forty thousand dollars, and when I die she shall be my heiress."

"Stop!" Eliot Van Zandt said, with the first sternness he had shown. "You mistake me, Carmontelle; I will take no dowry with my young bride, save her own innocence and beauty."

"But I claim the right—"

"And I refuse to admit it."

And they looked stubbornly into each other's eyes.