She drew her hand from his, and with another of her radiant smiles, swept from the room, leaving him in a maze of blissful bewilderment.  Never till this morning had a hope entered Hugh’s heart that Alice Johnson might be won.  Except her, there was not a girl in all the world who had ever awakened the slightest emotion within his heart, and Alice had seemed so far removed from him that to dream of her was worse than useless.  She would never esteem him save as a friend, and until this morning Hugh had fancied he could be satisfied with that, but there was something in the way her little fingers twined themselves around his, something in her manner, which prompted the wild hope that in an unguarded moment she had betrayed herself, had permitted him a glimpse of what was in her mind, only a glimpse, but enough to make the poor deluded man giddy with happiness.  She, the Golden Haired, could be won, and should be won.

“My wife, my Alice, my Golden Hair,” he kept repeating to himself, until, in his weak state, the perspiration dropped from every pore, and his mother, when she came to him, asked in much alarm what was the matter.

He could not tell her of his newly-born joy, so he answered evasively: 

“Rocket is sold to-day.  Is not that matter enough?”

“Poor Hugh, I wish so much that I was rich!” the mother sighed, as she wiped the sweat drops from his brow, arranged his pillows more comfortably, and then, sitting down beside him, said, hesitatingly—­“I have another letter from ’Lina.  Can you hear it now, or will you read it for yourself?”

It was strange how the mention of ’Lina embittered at once Hugh’s cup of bliss, making him answer pettishly: 

“She has waited long enough, I think.  Give it to me, please,” and taking the letter that morning received, he read first that ’Lina was much obliged for the seventy-five dollars, and thought they must be growing generous, as she only asked for fifty.

“What seventy-five dollars?  What does she mean?” Hugh exclaimed, but his mother could not tell, unless it were that Alice, unknown to them, had sent more than ’Lina asked for.

This seemed probable, and as it was the only solution of the mystery, he accepted it as the real one, and returned to the letter, learning that the bracelet was purchased, that it could not be told from the lost one, that she was sporting it on Broadway every day, that she did not go to the prince’s ball just for the doctor’s meanness in not procuring a ticket when he had one offered to him for eighty dollars!

* * * * *

“I don’t really suppose he could afford it,” she wrote, “but it made me mad just the same, and I pouted all day.  I saw the ladies, though, after they were dressed, and that did me some good, particularly as the Queen of the South, Madam Le Vert, asked my opinion of her chaste, beautiful toilet, just as if she had faith in my judgment.