“No, no, I don’t mean to be impertinent. I would like the pleasure of a drive with you, and would return you safe to madame afterward. Please say you will accept my invitation,” he pleaded, his dark-blue eyes shining with a light that sent a sweet, warm thrill through her heart like a burning arrow—the flame-tipped arrow of love.
She grew dizzy with the thought of driving with him in the park—she, little Jessie Lyndon, poor, obscure, friendless, to be chosen by this splendid young exquisite, it was too good to be true.
“Will you go—to please me!” pleaded the musical, manly voice, and she murmured tremulously:
“I—would—go—if madame——”
“Leave that to me. I will coax her,” he said radiantly, as a little tinkle of the bell summoned him to the fortune teller.
CHAPTER IV.
THE WINNING OF A HEART.
Jessie set some very bad stitches in madame’s ruffling the next half hour, for her slender fingers trembled with the quick beating of her heart.
She had had her shy dreams of a lover, like other girls, and now they seemed about to become blissful reality.
Could it be he had fallen in love with her? This rich, handsome young man—in love with the face that she could not help knowing was very fair. Madame must be mistaken thinking that his strange agitation came from a quarrel with his sweetheart. He could not have had any sweetheart, surely.
Her dark eyes beamed with joy, her cheeks glowed crimson as a sea shell, and her heart throbbed wildly with suspense. Madame Barto came in presently with the young man, and said blandly: