And I thought perhaps--But then you disappeared, you know, and no one on earth could tell for three years what had become of you, when you suddenly turned up as Mr.John Scott at the Premier's dinner." The banker paused, and ran his hand through his gray hair.
The young man looked at him with curiosity and interest.
"Plague take it all! her mother, if she has one, could manage this matter so much better than I can," muttered the banker, as he poured out a glass of wine and drank it.

"Well, Lord Arondelle--I will give myself the pleasure of calling you so while we are _tete-a-tete_ 'over the walnuts and wine.' Lord Arondelle, there is my daughter; what do you think of her ?" he demanded, bending down his gray brows and fixing his keen blue eyes scrutinizingly upon the young man's face which flushed at the suddenness of the question.

But he quickly recovered himself, and replied in a low, reverent tone: "I think Miss Levison the loveliest young creature I have ever had the happiness to know." "You do! So do _I_! I think so too.

And the man who gets my girl to wife will get a pearl of price." "I truly believe that," said the young man, with an involuntary sigh.
"That is right! Ahem! Bother it! a woman could do this so much better than such a blundering old fellow as I! Well, there! Salome has, in the three years since her first entrance into society, refused half a score of eligible men.

She is, and always has been, perfectly free from any such engagement.