“I have a secret to tell you also,” he replied, with a half-vexed flash in his eyes:  “There is a girl in this house who explains herself more or less every day, and who yet remains the most charming conundrum that ever kept a man awake from perplexity.”

“Oh, dear!” cried Madge, “is Miss Wildmere so bad as that?  Poor, pale victim of insomnia!  By the way, do you and Mr. Arnault keep a ledger account of the time you receive? or do you roughly go on the principle of ’share and share alike’?” and with eyes flashing back laughter at his reddening face, she ran up the steps and disappeared.

“That was a Parthian arrow,” he muttered.  “If we go smoothly on the sharing principle at present, we shall soon go roughly enough, or cease to go at all.”

But the lady in question was putting forth all her resources, which were not slight when enlisted in her own behalf, to keep the two men in statu quo until more time, with its chances, should pass.

Arnault smiled grimly when he saw her departing with Graydon.  She had been evasive, but very friendly, during the day thus far, and after what he had said the preceding night he felt that he was committed to her moods for a week if he could not bring her to a decision before.  Seeing Mr. Wildmere walking restlessly up and down the piazza, he joined him, and offering a superb cigar, said, “Suppose we go out to the lake and see where the little kid was so nearly drowned.”

Soon after they were smoking in the shade, the thoughts of both reverting to kindred anxieties.  Arnault decided to make one move before the final one.  Perhaps only this would be required; perhaps it might prepare the way for more serious action.  They talked over business.  Arnault, permitting the other to see through a veiled distinctness of language that he was prospering, remarked, “By the way, I have a little transaction which I wish you would carry out for us,” and mentioned an affair of ordinary brokerage, concluding, in off-hand tones, “from what you said some days since I infer that you may find a little money handy at present.  I can let you have a check for five hundred or a thousand just as well as not.  I know how dull times are now, and you will soon make it up by commissions.”

The hard-pressed man could scarcely disguise the relief which these words brought.  He began a grateful acknowledgment of the kindness, when Arnault interrupted him by saying, “Oh, that’s nothing—­mere matter of business.  I will write you a check to-night for a thousand.  It’s only an advance, you know,” and then changed the subject.

“Will you go to town to-morrow?” Mr. Wildmere asked.

“No, not to-morrow.  I’ll run down Tuesday or Wednesday.  In spite of the times business doesn’t give us much leeway this summer, but I’ve arranged to be away more or less at present.”  Then he added, with what was meant to be a frank, deprecatory laugh, “I suppose you see how it is.  It’s some time since I asked permission to pay my addresses to your daughter.  I don’t think I’ve been neglectful of opportunities, but I don’t get on as fast as I would like, and now feel that if I would keep any chance at all I must be on hand.  Muir is a formidable rival.”