"You don't understand, of course," she said, flushing. "How could you suppose us to be almost penniless living here in such a beautiful place with all those new trunks and gowns and pretty things! But that is exactly why we are doing it!"
She leaned forward in her chair, the tint of excitement in her cheeks.
"After the failure, Silvette and I hadn't anything very much!—you know how everything of uncle's went—" She stopped abruptly. "Why—why, probably everything of yours went, too! Did it?"
He laughed: "Pretty nearly everything."
"Oh! oh!" she cried; "what a perfectly atrocious complication! Perhaps—perhaps you haven't money enough to—to go somewhere else for a while. Have you?"
"Well, I'll fix it somehow."
"Mr. Edgerton!" she said excitedly, "Silvette and I have got to go!"
"No," he said laughing, "you've only got to go on with your story, Miss Tennant. I am a very interested and sympathetic listener."
"Yes," she said desperately, "I must go on with that, too. Listen, Mr. Edgerton; we thought a long while and discussed everything, and we concluded to stake everything on an idea that came to Silvette. So we drew out all the money we had and we paid all our just debts, and we parted with our chaperone—who was a perfect d-darling—I'll tell you about her sometime—and we took Argent, our cat, and came straight to New York, and we hunted and hunted for an apartment until we found this! And then—do you know what we did?" she demanded excitedly.
"I couldn't guess!" said Edgerton, smiling.