Fausta laughed, and said again, less tragically than before, “I have perfect confidence in you,”—­little thinking how she started my blood with the words; but this time, as if in token, she let me take her hand upon my arm, as we walked down the street together.

If we had been snobs, or even if I had been one, I should have taken her to Taylor’s, and have spent all the money I had on such a luncheon as neither of us had ever eaten before.  Whatever else I am, I am not a snob of that sort.  I show my colors.  I led her into a little cross-street which I had noticed in our erratic morning pilgrimage.  We stopped at a German baker’s.  I bade her sit down at the neat marble table, and I bought two rolls.  She declined lager, which I offered her in fun.  We took water instead, and we had dined, and had paid two cents for our meal, and had had a very merry dinner, too, when the clock struck two.

“And now, Mr. Carter,” said she, “I will steal no more of your day.  You did not come to New York to escort lone damsels to the Astor Library or to dinner.  Nor did I come only to see the lions or to read French.  I insist on your going to your affairs, and leaving me to mine.  If you will meet me at the Library half an hour before it closes, I will thank you; till then,” with a tragedy shake of the hand, and a merry laugh, “adieu!”

I knew very well that no harm could happen to her in two hours of an autumn afternoon.  I was not sorry for her conge, for it gave me an opportunity to follow my own plans.  I stopped at one or two cabinet-makers, and talked with the “jours” about work, that I might tell her with truth that I had been in search of it;—­then I sedulously began on calling upon every man I could reach named Mason.  O, how often I went through one phase or another of this colloquy:—­

“Is Mr. Mason in?”

“That’s my name, sir.”

“Can you give me the address of Mr. Mason who returned from Europe last May?”

“Know no such person, sir.”

The reader can imagine how many forms this dialogue could be repeated in, before, as I wrought my way through a long line of dry-goods cases to a distant counting-room, I heard some one in it say, “No, madam, I know no such person as you describe”; and from the recess Fausta emerged and met me.  Her plan for the afternoon had been the same with mine.  We laughed as we detected each other; then I told her she had had quite enough of this, that it was time she should rest, and took her, nolens volens, into the ladies’ parlor of the St. Nicholas, and bade her wait there through the twilight, with my copy of Clementine, till I should return from the police-station.  If the reader has ever waited in such a place for some one to come and attend to him, he will understand that nobody will be apt to molest him when he has not asked for attention.