holiday seasons, and at times of monthly settlements, often stuffed
the portmanteau with sums rising the hundred thousand.

His callous eye vainly rested on the peopled loneliness of the
bustling crowd, intent only upon the possibility of a sudden dash
of some sneak thief, or the chance malignity of some swell "mobsman."

Suddenly Randall Clayton paused in his swinging stride. For a
face, rapt in its intense earnestness, broke in upon his gnawing
loneliness. A lovely vision, a very Rose of Life's Garden!

"By Jove!" he murmured, as with a new-born craft he lingered for
a moment before a window with an "art" display, only to watch the
receding form of the unknown beauty, whose single glance had left
him standing there spellbound.

There was an exquisite artist proof of a romantic scene upon the
Danube displayed in the place of honor, a view of one of the grandly
witching defiles where the mighty stream immortalized by Strauss
breaks out of the smiling Austrian plains, dashing along into the
Iron Gates of gallant Hungary.

He could not, as yet, tell what manner of woman she might be, but
his spirit burned within him as he felt the lingering spell of
those dark, witching eyes, for they had rested upon his own, in an
instant, unguarded glance of sympathy.

Mechanically following on, Clayton noted the refinement of the
daintily cut dark dress, veiling a form of ravishing symmetry.
There was a single red rose in the Polish toque, and that one touch