Belinda smiled.
"Why, I'd be delighted," she said in answer to the question in his face.
"Oh, may I come? Really? That's awfully good of you."
And as he sat in the smoking-car puffing mechanically at a cigar that was not lighted Morgan Hamilton vowed a thank-offering to the god of chance.
CHAPTER IV
A WOLF IN THE FOLD
MISS LUCILLA RYDER, clothed in stateliness as in a garment, was conducting a business interview in her study.
Facing her, sat a slender young woman gowned in black. The black frock, the black hat, the black gloves were simple, unobtrusive, altogether suitable for an impecunious instructor of youth; but there was a subtle something about them that would have whispered "French" to a worldly-wise observer, even if their wearer had not been speaking the purest of Parisian French in a voice calculated to impart melody to any language.
Miss Lucilla bent upon this attractive applicant for the position left vacant by the illness of Madame Plongeon—long-time French chaperon in the Ryder school—what she fondly believed to be a keen and penetrating scrutiny.