"Come, I have a great mind to make a confidant of you. Let us go and sit down yonder in the square, and smoke."
When they were seated, and puffing away at their cigars, he began:
"The fact is, I was in a brown study, too, Van Zandt, or I should not have run against you. I was going to Madame Lorraine's, and I found myself thinking soberly, seriously about the beautiful madame's wretched little slave and foot-ball, the Little Nobody you saw there last night."
"Yes," Van Zandt answered, with a quick start.
"By Heaven! it is a shame that the poor, pretty little vixen has no friends to rescue her from her tormentor!" exclaimed Carmontelle, vehemently. "For years this cruelty has been going on, and the girl, with her immortal soul, has been made a puppet by that charming, heartless woman. Would you believe it, the girl has never been given even the rudiments of an education? She is ignorant as a little savage, with not even a name. Yet I have seen this go on for years, in my careless fashion, without an effort to help the child. I can not understand what has roused me from my apathy, what has made me think of her at last—ah, mon Dieu!"
This exclamation was called forth by some sudden inward light. He went on, with a half-shamed laugh:
"What a speech I have made you, although I do not usually preach. Van Zandt, am I getting good, do you think, or—have I fallen in love with that Little Nobody?"
There was a minute's pause, and Eliot Van Zandt took the cigar from between his lips, and answered, quietly:
"In love, decidedly."
"Parbleu!"