Stay!  There was the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh, who might have seen his way through, had he chanced to read the “Personal” column of the paper.

On the Thursday morning that this last advertisement appeared, Mrs. Carl Walraven sat alone in the pretty boudoir sacred to her privacy.  It was her choice to breakfast alone sometimes, en dishabille.  It had been her choice on this particular day.

At her elbow stood the tiny round table, with its exquisite appointments of glass, and porcelain, and silver; its chocolate, its toast, its eggs, its little broiled bird.

Mrs. Walraven was of the luxurious sort, as your full-blown, high-blooded Cleopatras are likely to be, and did ample justice to the exquisite cuisine of the Walraven mansion.

Lying back gracefully, her handsome morning robe falling loosely around her, her superb black hair twisted away in a careless, serpentine coil, her face fresh and blooming, “at peace with the world and all therein,” my lady Blanche digested her breakfast and leisurely skimmed the morning paper.

She always liked the “Personals.”  To-day they had a double interest for her.  She read again and again—­a dozen times, at least—­that particular “Personal” appointing the meeting at Fourteenth Street, and a lazy smile came over her tropical face at last as she laid it down.

“Nothing could be better,” mused Mrs. Walraven, with that indolent smile shining in her lazy, wicked black eyes.  “The little fool sets her trap, and walks into it herself, like the inconceivable idiot she is.  It reminds one of the ostrich, this advertisement—­pretty Mollie buries her head in the sand, and fancies no one sees her.  Now, if Guy only plays his part—­and I think he will, for he’s absurdly and ridiculously in love with the fair-haired tom-boy—­she will be caught in the nicest trap ever silly seventeen walked into.  She was caged once, and got free.  She will find herself caged again, and not get free.  I shall have my revenge, and Guy will have his inamorata.  I’ll send for him at once.”

Mrs. Walraven rose, sought out her blotting-book, took a sheet of paper and an envelope, and scrawled two or three words to her cousin: 

“DEAR GUY,—­Come to me at once.  I wish to see you most particularly.  Don’t lose a moment.

“Very truly,

“BLANCHE.”

Ringing the bell, Mrs. Walraven dispatched this little missive, and then, reclining easily in the downy depths of her violet velvet fauteuil, she fell into a reverie that lasted for upward of an hour.  With sleepy, slow, half-closed eyes, the wicked, smile just curving the ripe-red mouth, Mme. Blanche wandered in the land of meditation, and had her little plot all cut and dry as the toy Swiss clock on the low mantel struck up a lively waltz preparatory to striking eleven.  Ere the last silvery chime had ceased vibrating, the door of the boudoir opened and Dr. Guy Oleander walked in.