"Allons!" she remarked to the ceiling. "Et maintenant, mademoiselle, au travail."
Loftus stood up, took Marie's hand again, held it a second, nodded at the woman. In a moment he had gone.
"Au revoir," the ex-first lady called after him. She turned to the girl. "A gallant monsieur. And good to look at." Then seating herself at the piano she attacked the brindisi from "Lucrezia." "Ah! the segreto!" she interrupted herself to exclaim, "il segreto per esser felice—the secret of happiness! Mais! There is but one! C'est l'amour! And with a gallant monsieur like that! And rich! C'est le rêve! N'est ce pas, mon enfant?"
"Je vous en prie, madame," said Marie severely, or rather as severely as she could, for she was trembling with emotion, saturated with the love that had been thrown at her head, drenched with it, frightened too at the apperception of the secret which the aria that her teacher was strumming revealed.
CHAPTER IV
ENCHANTMENT
SAILING in the hansom down Fifth avenue, Loftus thought of that first interview with the girl, of the den in which it had occurred and of his subsequent visits there. Since the introduction he had seen her three times, seen, too, of course, that she was not up to Fanny, but he had seen also that she was less ambitious, more tractable in every way. Besides, one is not loved every afternoon. To him that was the main point, and of that point he was now tolerably sure.
Suddenly the hansom tacked, veered and landed him at the ex-first lady's door.
"Bonjour, mon beau seigneur," the woman began when, presently, he reached her lair. "The little one will not delay."
"And then?"