"I shall be able to pay you for my breakfast and the messenger now," said Loveland. "And if you've a private room, I'd like to engage it till afternoon, when I can send to the hotel again, and find the cable telling me how and where to get the money on my letter of credit. It's rather awkward being here in these clothes, and——"

"We haven't got a private room," replied the girl, "except our own parlour. I wish we had, because—because I guess you're just about right. You oughtn't to be here, today, sitting around dressed that way. You might be noticed, and—and——" She hesitated, then began to speak again quickly, in a low voice. "See here, Mr.—Mr. Gordon. I don't know but I'd better tell you something. Bend down; I don't want the waiters to hear. Dutchy don't catch onto English much, but folks always understand when you don't want 'em to. Of course it's all right about Bill, as he's your friend. I suppose he knows?"

"Knows what?" enquired Val, bending down towards her as she had asked, his elbows on the counter, while Bill tactfully retired out of earshot.

"Why—it's—it's in the paper; this morning's 'Light.'"

"Oh!" The blood sprang to Val's face, his scar showing very white. No need, it seemed, for further questions. He thought he knew what Miss Isidora Alexander had been reading in the paper, and cursed himself for having uttered the name of Loveland. If he had not told her that enquiries must be made at the Waldorf for Lord Loveland's cablegram and letters, she would not associate Mr. Gordon, Bill Willing's friend, with the hero of "New York Light's" story.

That cad, Milton, had evidently made up some tale, on recovering his disgusting senses, a tale not too damaging to himself, and had named his assailant.

"Give me the paper, please," Val demanded.

"Not now," said the girl. "Dutchy's looking, and that, silly boy, Blinkey, has just come in. I don't know as Dutchy reads English, and 'tain't likely Blinkey bothers about the news, even when he gets time. But you never can tell. They may have read, and they may be putting things together already. Better not let 'em guess we're alludin' to anything in the paper."

"Is it about my knocking a man down?" asked Loveland.

"Yes, a swell, well known in s'ciety. I've seen his name often in 'Town Chat.' And it's about you at the hotel, too——"

Suddenly it seemed to Val that he would not have the heart to read that article about himself in the newspapers. His sensitive vanity sent a sharp twinge through his body, as if a nerve had been touched with the point of a knife. That scene of his humiliation in the Waldorf Restaurant, and afterwards in the hall! how could he bear to see it all set out in vulgar print, accompanied perhaps by an "interview" with the hotel employÉ who had turned him into the street? No, he could not look at the paper, could not see himself held up to public ridicule—probably by the pen of the man he had ordered from his door with Cadwallader Hunter yesterday in the morning.

Physically, Loveland was not a coward; but touch his vanity and he shrank as if with fear, and, mortified to the quick, as his imagination pictured the amusement his plight must be at this moment creating round thousands of breakfast tables, he broke in upon the girl's revelations, almost roughly. "Never mind—that part now," he said. "That's nothing. Has the man Milton set the police on me?"

"Nope. I guess not. There's a kind of interview with him in the paper, and he says he deserved what he got for havin' anything to do with a man of your sort. He says after he'd told you exactly what he thought of you, you hit him from behind; which I don't believe, because you ain't that kind, I'll bet——"

"Thank you," said Loveland, looking so handsome in the pallor of his anger that the Jewish girl could not take her eyes from his face. Her sensuous temperament made her adore beauty, of which she saw little in her everyday life. It was because she loved beauty and colour that she chose red and other vivid-hued dresses for herself. Because she loved beauty she studied fashion-plates, and pinched in her plump waist to what she considered perfect elegance of form. Because she loved beauty and thought she was attaining it, she covered her smooth polished skin with pearl powder, and tortured her hair with metal curling-pins. Because she loved beauty she was now ready to fling her soul at this stranger's feet. Having read the newspaper, she believed him to be a blackguard; but she had not been taught a high standard of virtue for men; and if she had, she would still have been fiercely ready to protect this splendid scoundrel.

"No, I'm not that kind of man," Val echoed her words. "Evidently the cowardly beast must have picked himself up before he was seen, otherwise, as he was lying flat on his fat back, his story about having been hit from behind would hardly have held water. Will the police do anything on their own responsibility, do you think?"

"Not unless somebody sends them lookin' for you, I hope," Isidora reassured him, flattered that she should be taken into consultation. "This Milton says in the interview, he don't want to be mussed up in a scandal, or called on as a witness against you in a police-court."

"It's his own scandal!" broke out Loveland. "He knows I could defend myself only too well. And being a cad himself, he doesn't know that I wouldn't bring in certain names."

"Still, the hotel people may try to make trouble," the girl suggested. "It was so early when the messenger got there, p'raps they hadn't read the papers, because if they had, they could have followed the boy here, if they wanted."

"I shall have to send again for the cablegram, no matter what happens," said Val. "I must get money."

"Sure you can get it?" Isidora asked in a confidential, yet somewhat doubtful, tone.

"Of course I'm sure. I have my letter of credit—the one thing I did manage to keep."

"Yes, but——"

"There isn't any but," cut in Loveland, impatiently. "It's certain to be all right this afternoon, at latest. The cable will have come to the hotel, and then I shall know what to do. Even supposing the police should arrest me for that affair—well, at worst, the trouble ought to be over and done with in a day or two."

"Oh, indeed it wouldn't," exclaimed the pretty Jewess. "I don't know what mightn't happen to you. You will be careful, won't you—if it's only to please me?" And her eyes were large and beseeching.

"You're very kind to take an interest," said Val, really grateful, though he had to restrain an impulse to draw back from her advances. "Of course I don't want to be let in for a scandal which might do others harm as well as me—and would, if that beast Milton could manage it. I'm not exactly pining to see the inside of a New York gaol—which you seem to think I'm in danger of doing. Things are bad enough, as it is." And his face darkened, for he thought that, after the loathesome publicity the newspapers were now giving the name of Loveland, he might have difficulty in bringing down such game as he had crossed the sea to seek. Also, he remembered with a pang Lesley Dearmer's prophecy that the Louisville journals would reprint New York gossip.

"Oh, I'm sorry you think things here are so bad," retorted Isidora, flushed and pouting.

"You know I don't mean things here," protested Val, with less truth than politeness. "You're too good to me, and I appreciate it all immensely."

"Do you?" she asked, her eyes liquid.

"Of course I do. I hope I shall be able to prove that before long."

She blushed. To her mind, there was only one way in which a young man could prove that he appreciated a girl's goodness to him: by making love to her. And she could almost have fainted with joy at the thought of what it would be to have this glorious hero—villain though he might be—as a lover. Already she had a dim yet intoxicating vision of herself a bride in white silk (or should it be cream satin?) and a wreath of artificial orange blossoms amid clouds of tulle. There would be difficulties—a hundred difficulties, of which the greatest was now upstairs enjoying a well-earned rest. But who cared for a love that ran smooth? And Isidora thrilled as her fancy held a spyglass up to the future.

"Well," she said, warmly, "I mean to go on being good—better—best to you; for I'm studying out a plan to get your things away from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and all the same to keep you out of trouble. You're a foreigner, and don't understand our ways yet, but I'll see you through all right."

"How are you going to do that, my guardian angel?" Val smiled at the pretty Jewess.

Isidora had the sensation of being bathed in perfumed cream. His "guardian angel"! She had been called a number of nice things, such as a "real beaut," a high-flyer and a Floradora; but no one had ever hailed her as his guardian angel before, and with all her heart she vowed that she would live up to the name.

"I don't know exactly yet how I'll do it," she admitted. "But you leave it to me, and it'll be done, you'll see. Only give me an order signed 'Loveland,' to bring away anything of yours from the hotel. Meantime, I've thought of one thing, which is, you'd better not be seen here till we're sure they ain't onto you, through that messenger boy. I tell you what; I've got a lady friend in this street, Mrs. Johnny Gernsbacher, who's lookin' after an empty house that's for rent."

"A caretaker?" asked Loveland.

"I guess that's right. Me and Mrs. Gernsbacher's good friends. She's a widow lady, quite old, 'most forty-five, so she'll do for a chaperon. Pa had her boy here once to wait, and then through me and friends of mine he got a better job outside. She'd be glad to do me a good turn. You can see to things here for five minutes till I run across and ask if she'll let you stay there in the house, as a friend of mine, till you have time to look around."

"I—see to things?" echoed Loveland, blankly.

"Yes. If anybody comes in, they'll take you for a swell waiter, in those clothes. They'll think Alexander the Great's startin' in for uptown style."

She laughed with amusement at the joke, and Loveland laughed, too, though not very heartily. He was not enchanted at the idea of being mistaken for a "swell waiter," but beggars must not be choosers, and he offered no objection to the plan.

Wrapping over her head a red crocheted scarf which she called a "fascinator," Isidora darted into the street, panting with haste lest the worst should happen in her absence, and her father take it into his head to come downstairs. But she had seen him last dozing over the Police News, in a quilted home-made dressing-gown, and that was such a short time ago that she hardly thought there was danger of a surprise.

Mrs. Gernsbacher must have been very accessible and easily persuaded, for in less than ten minutes the girl was back again, flushed with triumph. "It's all right," she announced. "Beccy G's standing in the basement door, waiting for you to pop in. Bill, you show him the way to Beccy's. Goodbye, Mr. Gordon. Don't stay here another minute. I'll be over as soon as I can, to tell you what's up—and I'll send Bill along at noon with something good for your dinner."

Carried off his feet by her enthusiasm, Loveland did not stop for further argument. Caught by an eddy in the tide of fate, he let himself be swept away.