Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/42

 She frowned in her perplexity—and was thereby the more enchanting.

"Thank you," she concluded, at length. "Possibly—who can tell?—you may serve me as well as he whom I had expected."

"Only too gladly, mademoiselle!" he cried with unfeigned enthusiasm.

She nodded affirmatively, patting her lips with her fan—lost upon the instant in meditation, doubting, yet half convinced of the wiseness of her course.

O'Rourke waited uneasily, afire with impatience, fearful lest she should change her mind. Eventually, she mused aloud—more to herself than to the stranger.

"You are honest, I believe, monsieur," said she softly; "you would not he to me. Who knows? You might prove the very man we need, and—and, oh, monsieur, our need is great!"

"But try me!" he pleaded abjectly.

"Thank you, monsieur—I will," she told him, a smile lightening the gravity of her mood.

And the fiacre came to a halt.