his fortunes. Such love affairs as he had experienced had been entirely in his imagination. The face of some lovely female seen on a street-car would haunt him for days. He would imagine their meeting; the mutual attraction; the courtship; the presents which he gave her, and how she received them. His feeling for her was always that of a slave for a superior being. He was a Sir Walter to fling his best coat across the mud puddle for her to step on. In these marriages which take place solely in the imagination the little man had been a regular Turk. But it is doubtful if he had ever held a real live woman's hand. If any of a thousand women had encouraged Mr. Chumleigh he would have straightway fallen in love and been that woman's slave for life.
How a man so timid should have scraped acquaintance with a young woman so carefully brought up and hedged about by a watchful mother eye may seem mysterious. But one must remember that for a long time Sarah had been worrying about men, and had firmly determined to capture one before her years were too many and it should be too late.
Yet from the many men stopping at the Jefferson Hotel she had not especially singled out Mr. Chumleigh. Any man would have done, for she felt a perfect competence to take any man and
