Miss Dane laughed.

“Oh, dear, no! not at all—­the sort of thing I am used to, I assure you!  May I ask its purport?”

“Miss Dane, you must pardon me,” said Mr. Walraven, plunging desperately head first into his mission, “but I saw you play last night, and I have—­yes, I have taken a violent fancy to you.”

Miss Mollie Dane never flinched.  The wicked sparkle in the dancing eyes grew a trifle wickeder, perhaps, but that was all.

“Yes,” she said, composedly; “go on.”

“You take it very coolly,” remarked the gentleman, rather taken aback himself.  “You don’t appear the least surprised.”

“Of course not!  I told you I was used to it.  Never knew a gentleman of taste to see me play yet and not take a violent fancy to me.  Pray go on.”

If Miss Dane wished, in her wickedness, to utterly disconcert her middle-aged admirer, she could not have adopted a surer plan.  For fully five minutes he sat staring in hopeless silence.

“Have you anything more to say?” queried the dauntless Mollie, pulling out her watch.  “Because, if you have, you will please say it at once.  My time is precious, I assure you.  Rehearsal is at three, and after rehearsal there are the spangles to sew on my dress, and after that—­”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Dane; I have a great deal more to say, and if you will listen you need never attend rehearsal again, and never sew on spangles any more.”

“Indeed!”

The blue eyes opened very wide in a fixed, unwinking stare.

“I like you very much, Miss Dane—­so much that I think it is a thousand pities you should waste your youth, and beauty, and genius on desert air.  So—­”

“Yes,” said Miss Dane—­“so you have fallen in love with me at first sight.  Is that what you are trying to say?”

“No!” responded Mr. Walraven, emphatically.  “I am not in the least in love with you, and never mean to be—­in that way.”

“Oh, in what way, then, Mr. Walraven?”

“I am a rich man, Miss Dane, and a lonely man very often, and I should like to have a daughter to cheer my old age—­a daughter like you, Mistress Cricket, saucy and bright, and so pretty that it will be a pleasure only to look at her.”

“And a very complimentary papa you will make.  Have you no daughters of your own, Mr. Walraven?”

“None, Miss Mollie.  I have the misfortune to have no wife.”

“And never mean to have?”

“Can’t say about that.  I may one day.”

“And you are quite sure you will never want me to fill that vacant honor?”

“Surer than sure, my dear little girl I want you only for my adopted daughter.”

“And you never saw me before last night?”

“Never,” said Carl Walraven, unflinchingly.

“You are a very rich man, you say?”

“Very rich—­a millionaire—­and you shall be my heiress when I die.”

“I am afraid I shall be a very long time out of my inheritance, then.  Well, this is a surprise, and you are the oddest gentleman I have met for some time.  Please let me catch my breath!  You are quite certain you are not playing a practical joke at my expense all this time?”