“It is a long way,” she said.

“I don’t care,” he answered valiantly.

“To—­America!”

“America!” he gasped.  “But—­is this a joke, Miss Violet?”

She shook her head.

“Of course not!  America is not a great journey.”

“But it will cost—­”

She laughed softly.

“My mistress is very rich,” she said.  “The cost does not matter at all.  You will have all the money you can spend—­and more.”

He felt himself short of breath, and bereft of words.

“Gee whiz!” he murmured.

They sat there in silence for a few moments.  A promenading couple put their heads behind the screen, and withdrew with the sound of feminine giggling.  Outside, the piano was being thumped to the tune of a popular polka.

“But what have I go to do?” he asked.

“To watch a man who will go out by the same steamer as you,” she answered.  “Write to London, tell me what he does, how he spends his time, whether he is ill or well.  You must stay at the same hotel in New York, and try and find out what his business is there.  Remember, we want to know, my mistress and I, everything that he does.”

“Who is he?” he asked.  “A friend of your mistress?”

“No!” she answered shortly, “an enemy.  A cruel enemy—­the cruelest enemy a woman could have!”

The subdued passion of her tone thrilled him.  He felt himself bewildered—­in touch with strange things.  She leaned a little closer towards him, and that mysterious perfume, which was one of her many fascinations, dazed him with its sweetness.

“If you could send home word,” she whispered, “that he was ill, that anything had happened to him, that he was not likely to return—­our fortunes would be made—­yours and mine.”

“Stop!” he muttered.  “You—­phew!  It’s hot here!”

He wiped the perspiration recklessly from his forehead with a red silk handkerchief.

“What made you come to me?” he asked.  “I don’t even know the name of your mistress.”

“And you must not ask it,” she declared quietly.  “It is better for you not to know.  I came to you because you were a man, and I knew that I could trust you.”

Her flattery sank into his soul.  No one else had ever called him a man.  He felt himself capable of great things.  To think that, but for the coming of this wonderful Mademoiselle Violet, he might even now have been furnishing a small shop on the outskirts of Islington, with collars and ties and gloves designed to attract the youth of that populous neighborhood!

“When do I start?” he asked with a coolness which surprised himself.

She drew a heavy packet from the recesses of the muff she carried.

“All the particulars are here,” she said.  “The name of the steamer, the name of the man, and money.  You will be told where to get more in New York, if you need it.”

He took it from her mechanically.  She rose to her feet.