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"Only that you have suffered, my darling," said Clayton, folding her to his breast. "Ah! I must make an end of it!" the loyal lover cried, as Irma lay sobbing on his breast. "If I could only come to you; how shall I know? Can you trust no one? There is Madame Raffoni," said Clayton. "She knows where my office is.
"I receive no one; I am a recluse," murmured Irma, with eyes smiling through down dropped lashes; "but, if you care, you may come, a week from to-day, and breakfast with me here! Dear old Raffoni will play propriety. As for the singing, I am pledged to be mute, parôle d'honneur. But you must be in my first audience. I must keep an artist's faith with my manager."
For the summer boats were already running, and, on the broad piazzas of the Oriental they could safely meet. It was so easy for Madame Raffoni to pilot the incognito diva by the railway to the Manhattan Hotel. A double veil and a judiciously fringed sunshade would make Irma Gluyas impregnable to the flaneur. "Alas!
"I await Madame Raffoni here for a little tour of the wonderful New York shops." It was a natural passage from the picture to the memories of the Danube, and then, under the kindling glances of the diva, Randall Clayton talked, with spirit, of his happy summer ramblings through Austria and Hungary.
He had only time to dismiss the carriage and drag Madame Raffoni on the ferry-boat when the chains barred out a score of the rushing crowd. Twenty minutes later, his heart beating a funeral knell, Randall Clayton, portmanteau in hand, passed within the portals of the old brownstone mansion. As the woman softly closed the door, which she had opened with a pass-key, she laid her finger on her lip.
Lilienthal will let you know when I am coming back, and advise you." The two lovers had met, far away at Manhattan Beach, after Madame Raffoni had discreetly piloted Clayton over to a sandy hollow where a half-burned spar gave a convenient resting-place, before Fritz Braun and Lilienthal had finished an acrimonious settlement of some private money matters. "I'm not a wolf," growled Braun.
You know not my abode. You cannot write or telegraph safely to my office. "There are veiled spies, jealous rivals, there, who would rob me of place, power, and the money which will yet be ours, in the dear far-off Danube land. "You have been ill, distressed," he fondly said. "Nay, do not deny it! Madame Raffoni has told me all." "My God!" whispered Irma. "She has told you"
And yet there was no word from Madame Raffoni, the only holder of the secret of Irma Gluyas' life. His foot was on the threshhold to leave at last, when Arthur Ferris calmly entered. Randall Clayton mastered himself with a mighty effort, as Ferris glibly murmured, "I am only here for a few moments! Come into the private office."
And neither the lad, astounded as his mother's unaccustomed finery, nor the love-blinded Randall Clayton ever knew that "Madame Raffoni" hastened to Magdal's Pharmacy to whisper to Mr. Fritz Braun tidings which brought a surging swell of triumph into that arch plotter's heart. "Leah! You are a wonder, after all," was the comment of her old lover. "Keep this whole matter quiet. Hoodwink them all!
With a dumb fidelity Madame Raffoni had accompanied her beautiful charge. There was a wholesome innocence in these strangely arranged stolen interviews. Clayton often searched that lovely face to read what malign influence kept her from opening her whole life to him. But it all seemed so clear.
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