his companion's imagination, with intuitive skill.

"Have I kept you too long, dear father?" exclaimed Elsie, when at last she sought her much enduring parent and sank into a seat beside him.

"Well, you've been a trifle longer travelling around than greased lightning. I've finished my two journals, and had a doze, but you have enjoyed the pictures, eh?"

"Very, very much; Mr. Glynn knows a great deal about painting, and he has explained many things that puzzled me. I never enjoyed the salon so much before. Will you come with us again, Mr. Glynn?"

"I shall be very glad," he returned with laudable sobriety. "But I fear I shall have to leave Paris in about ten days," he added.

"Then pray let us come one day next week," said Elsie, quite unmoved by this announcement.

"All right, ma belle," returned her father; "but we must be going now, it's six o'clock, and I asked Vincent to dine, we have a little business to talk over."

Elsie was silent, but a distressed look crept over her speaking face. "If you want to talk of business may I not go to dine with Antoinette?"

"Aha! you perverse little puss, you are real unkind to poor Vincent, who is a good fellow enough; why, every one likes him but you."

"And I do not like him, nor do I like to sing to him."

"See that now! and he an old friend of your father's before—no, not quite before you were born. Well, please yourself, dear, please—Why," interrupting himself, "there's old Monsieur Chauvot; I must speak to him."

He went forward, and was soon in deep conversation with a stout Frenchman, through whose arm he passed his own, and they walked on together, Elsie and Glynn following.

"So Vincent is one of your father's friends who do not find favor in your eyes. What has he done?" asked Glynn.

"Nothing; I cannot account for my dislike, but it is here," pressing her hand on her heart, "and will not go away."

"And I with as little reason share it," returned Glynn.

"Do you? I am glad, which is very wrong, but it comforts me to find some one else unreasonable. Madame Davilliers and Antoinette think him quite nice and agreeable."

At the door of Madame Davilliers' residence Elsie paused.

"I may as well go in now," she said to Lambert. "Will you not come in and say a little word to madame? and you, too, Mr. Glynn, she will be delighted to see you."

Glynn assented. After a quarter of an hour's lively talk amidst a circle of evidently solid and respectable visitors he was cordially requested to call again, and left the house with Lambert, feeling that another link had been added to the magic chain which was twining itself around him.

"She's an elegant woman, faith," said Lambert with the air of a connoisseur, as he left the house with Glynn, "and so is the demoiselle. I always count it real good luck that Elsie fell in with them, for between you and me and the post, none of my acquaintances were just suited to introduce a young lady into society. It's been uphill work I can tell you, but Madame D. has been no end of a help to me. Why, you'd never have the faintest notion of all the whim-whams she has put me up to! Wouldn't you think now a girl would be all right in her father's house with a respectable young woman like Celestine to wait on her? Not a bit of it. Madame says I must have a sort of a lady to be a companion to Elsie, and so she found Madame Weber for us. Now they are going to marry Antoinette to a very respectable wealthy young Vicomte that will be another backer for Elsie. I believe preliminaries are nearly arranged, and then he'll be presented as a prétendant."

"What a hideous system it is," ejaculated Glynn.

"I don't see that at all," returned Lambert; "a good girl will get fond of any man who makes her a kind husband, and God only knows the relief it is to a parent to make sure that all's right, and see, too, one's girl safe under the protection of a strong man." He spoke with feeling.

"There are some better aspects, I confess, to the mariage de convenance," said Glynn, "but the worse outweigh them."

"Well, I am inclined for the system, though our Amurican girls would never stand it."