make them well."
"Poor child!" said Van Zandt; and then, without preamble, he blurted out the story of what had just happened.
Carmontelle listened with clinched hands and flashing eyes, the veins standing out on his forehead like whip-cords.
"The fiend!" he muttered. "Peste! he was always a sneak, always a villain at heart. More than once we have wished him well out of the club. Now he shall be lashed from the door, the double-dyed scoundrel! And she, the deceitful madame, she could plan this horrid deed! She is less than woman. She shall suffer, mark you, for her sin."
"But the little ma'amselle, Carmontelle? What shall we do to deliver her from her peril? Every passing moment brings her doom nearer, yet I can think of nothing. My brain seems dull and dazed."
"Do? Why, we shall take a carriage and bring her away 'over the garden wall,'" replied Carmontelle, lightly but emphatically.
"Very well; but—next?"
Carmontelle stared and repeated, in some bewilderment:
"Next?"
Eliot Van Zandt explained:
"I mean, what shall we do when we have brought her away? Where shall we find her a refuge and hiding-place from her treacherous enemies?" anxiously.
"You cold-blooded, long-headed Yankee! I never thought of that. I should have brought her away without thinking of the future. But you are right. It is a question that should be decided first. What, indeed, shall we do with the girl?"
And for a moment they looked at each other, in the starlight, almost helplessly.
Then Van Zandt said, questioningly:
"Perhaps you have relatives or friends with whom you could place her? I am not rich, but I could spare enough to educate this wronged child."
"I have not a relative in the world—not a friend I could trust; nothing but oceans of money, so you may keep yours. I'll spend some of mine in turning this little savage into a Christian."
"You will take her to school, then, right away?" Van Zandt went on, in his quiet, pertinacious way.
"Yes; and, by Jove, when she comes out, finished, I'll marry her, Van Zandt! I will, upon my word!"
"If she will have you," laconically.
"Peste! what a fellow you are, to throw cold water upon one. Perhaps you have designs upon her yourself?"
"Not in the face of your munificent intentions," carelessly.
"Very well; I shall consider her won, then, since you are too generous to enter the lists against me. What a magnificent beauty she will make when she has learned her three R's!" laughingly. "But, come; shall we not go at once to deliver our little friend from Castle Dangerous?"
They rose.
"I am glad I ran against you, Carmontelle. You have straightened out the snarl that tangled my mind. Now for our little stratagem. You will bring the carriage to the end of the square, while I go back to the garden and steal the bird away."
"Excellent!" said Carmontelle. "Oh, how they will rage when they find the bird has flown! To-morrow the club shall settle with Remond; for madame, she shall be ostracised. We shall desert her in a body. Who would have believed she would be so base?"
Van Zandt made no comment. He only said, as if struck by a sudden thought:
"The poor child will have no clothes fit to wear away. Can you find time, while getting a carriage, to buy a gray dress, a long ulster, and a hat and veil?"
"Of course. What a fellow you are to think of things! I should not have thought of such a thing; yet what school would have received her in that white slip—picturesque, but not much better than a ballet-dancer's skirts!" exclaimed the lively Southerner. "You are a trump, Van Zandt. Can you think of anything else as sensible?"
"Some fruit and bonbons to soothe her at school—that is all," lightly, as they parted, one to return to Mme. Lorraine's, the other to perfect the arrangements for checkmating Remond's nefarious design.
Carmontelle was full of enthusiasm over the romantic idea that had occurred so suddenly to his mind. A smile curled his lips, as he walked away, thinking of dark-eyed Little Nobody, and running over in his mind a score of feminine cognomens, with one of which he meant to endow the nameless girl.
"Constance, Marie, Helene, Angela, Therese, Maude, Norine, Eugenie, etc.," ran his thoughts; but Eliot Van Zandt's took a graver turn as he went back to the starlit garden and the girl who believed him her Heaven-sent deliverer from peril and danger.
"There is but little I can do; Carmontelle takes it all out of my hands," he mused. "Perhaps it is better so; he is rich, free."
A sigh that surprised himself, and he walked on a little faster until he reached the gate by which he had left the garden. Here he stopped, tapped softly, and waited.
But there was no reply to his knock, although he rapped again. Evidently she had gone into the house.
"I shall have to go in," he thought, shrinking from the encounter with the wicked madame and her partner in villainy, M. Remond.
Madame was at the piano, Remond turning the leaves of her music while she rendered a brilliant morceau. His hasty glance around the room did not find the little ma'amselle.
"She will be here presently," he decided, as he returned with what grace he could Mme. Lorraine's effusive greeting.
She was looking even lovelier than last night, in a costume of silvery silk that looked like the shimmer of moonlight on a lake. Her white throat rose from a mist of lace clasped by a diamond star. In her rich puffs of dark hair nestled white Niphetos roses shedding their delicate perfume about her as she moved with languid grace. The costume had been chosen for him. She had a fancy that it would appeal to his sense of beauty and purity more than her glowing robes of last night.
She was right. He started with surprise and pleasure at the dazzling sight, but the admiration was quickly succeeded by disgust.
"So beautiful, yet so wicked!" he said, to himself.
"You were singing. Pray go on," he said, forcing her back to the piano.
It would be easier to sit and listen than to take part in the conversation with his mind on the qui vive for the entrance of her he had come to save. He listened mechanically to the sentimental Italian chanson madame chose, but kept his eyes on the door, expecting every minute to see a petite white form enter the silken portals.
Remond saw the watchfulness, and scowled with quick malignity.
"Other eyes than mine watch for her coming," he thought.
The song went on. The minutes waned. Van Zandt furtively consulted his watch.
"Past ten. What if that wicked woman has already forced her to retire?" he thought, in alarm, and the minutes dragged like leaden weights.
"Oh, if I could but slip into the garden. Perhaps she is there still, fallen asleep like a child on the garden-seat."
Mme. Lorraine's high, sweet voice broke suddenly in upon his thoughts.
"Monsieur, you sing, I am sure. With those eyes it were useless to deny it. You will favor us?"
He was about to refuse brusquely, when a thought came to him. She would hear his voice, she would hasten to him, and the message of hope must be whispered quickly ere it was too late.
He saw Remond watching him with sarcastic eyes, and said, indifferently:
"I can sing a little from a habit of helping my sisters at home. And I belong to a glee club. If these scant recommendations please you, I will make an effort to alarm New Orleans with my voice."
"You need not decry your talents. I am sure you will charm us," she said; and Van Zandt dropped indolently upon the music-stool. His long, white fingers moved softly among the keys, evoking a tender accompaniment to one of Tennyson's sweetest love songs:
"'Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come