"Who is the lady?"
The other laughed. "Don't ask me; you can't keep up with him. They say they can't resist him."
An hour or two later, Mr. Plume, who had been waiting for some time in the café of a small hotel not very far up-town, was joined by Mr. Wickersham, whose countenance showed both irritation and disquietude. Plume, who had been consoling himself with the companionship of a decanter of rye whiskey, was in a more jovial mood, which further irritated the other.
"You say she has balked? Jove! She has got more in her than I thought!"
"She is a fool!" said Wickersham.
Plume shut one eye. "Don't know about that. Madame de Maintenon said: 'There is nothing so clever as a good woman.' Well, what are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
"Take a drink," said Mr. Plume, to whom this was a frequent solvent of a difficulty.
Wickersham followed his advice, but remained silent.
In fact, Mr. Wickersham, after having laid most careful plans and reached the point for which he had striven, found himself, at the very moment of victory, in danger of being defeated. He had induced Phrony Tripper to come to New York. She was desperately in love with him, and would have gone to the ends of the earth for him. But he had promised to marry her; it was to marry him that she had come. As strong as was her passion for him, and as vain and foolish as she was, she had one principle which was stronger than any other feeling--a sense of modesty. This had been instilled in her from infancy. Among her people a woman's honor was ranked higher than any other feminine virtue. Her love for Wickersham but strengthened her resolution, for she believed that, unless he married her, his life would not be safe from her relatives. Now, after two hours, in which he had used every persuasion, Wickersham, to his unbounded astonishment, found himself facing defeat. He had not given her credit for so much resolution. Her answer to all his efforts to overcome her determination was that, unless he married her immediately, she would return home; she would not remain in the hotel a single night. "I know they will take me back," she said, weeping.