Chapter I: Front Matter

ALBERT ROSS'
ROMANCES

A NEW EDITION AT A POPULAR PRICE

ALBERT ROSS is a brilliant and wonderfully successful writer whose books have sold far into the millions. Primarily his novels deal with the sex-problem, but he depicts vice with an artistic touch and never makes it unduly attractive. Gifted with a fine dramatic instinct, his characters become living, moving human beings full of the fire and passion of loving just as they are in real life. His stories contain all the elements that will continue to keep him at the head of American novelists in the number of his admirers.

MR. ROSS is to be congratulated on the strength as well as the purity of his work. It shows that he is not obliged to confine his pen to any single theme, and that he has a good a right to be called the "American Eugene Sue" or the "American Zola."

_12mo, cloth. Price per volume, 50 cents._

Black Adonis, A
Garston Bigamy, The
Her Husband's Friend
His Foster Sister
His Private Character
In Stella's Shadow
Love at Seventy
Love Gone Astray
Moulding a Maiden
Naked Truth, The
New Sensation, A
Original Sinner, An
Out of Wedlock
Speaking of Ellen
Stranger than Fiction
Sugar Princess, A
That Gay Deceiver
Their Marriage Bond
Thou Shalt Not
Thy Neighbor's Wife
Why I'm Single
Young Fawcett's Mabel
Young Miss Giddy

G.W. DILLINGHAM CO.

Publishers New York

A NEW SENSATION,

BY ALBERT ROSS.

AUTHOR OF

"THOU SHALT NOT," "HIS PRIVATE CHARACTER,"
"SPEAKING OF ELLEN," "IN STELLA'S SHADOW,"
"THEIR MARRIAGE BOND," ETC.

NEW YORK:
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY

_G.W. Dillingham Co., Publishers._

[_All rights reserved._]

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Lady Typewriter Wanted 9

II. Outlining the Scheme 21

III. An Evening at Koster and Bial's 32

IV. "You are a hopeless scamp" 46

V. Meeting Miss Marjorie 57

VI. "Do you really want me?" 71

VII. Getting Ready for my Journey 83

VIII. "A woman I like very well" 93

IX. A Private Dining Room 104

X. "Once there was a child" 116

XI. A Theft on Board Ship 129

XII. A Little Game of Cards 144

XIII. Bathing in the Surf 155

XIV. "Oh! this naughty boy!" 166

XV. Wesson Becomes a Nuisance 176

XVI. "It is from a girl" 184

XVII. A Struggle on the Balcony 196

XVIII. Our Night at Martinique 208

XIX. "It is a strange idea" 219

XX. New Work for my Typewriter 230

XXI. "You were in my room?" 241

XXII. Too Much Excitement 252

XXIII. A Wedding Ring 265

XXIV. The Brutal Truth 275

XXV. "With his wife, of course" 286

XXVI. Behind the Bars 297

XXVII. "I pressed them to my lips" 305

TO MY READERS.

It is a common question of my correspondents, "Are your novels ever founded on fact?" Sometimes; not often. This one is.

A year ago I had an attack of neurasthenia, as did "Donald Camran." I did not die, nor go to an insane asylum, both of which items of "news" appeared in the daily papers from one end of the country to the other; but I wasn't exactly well for awhile. In January of this year I made my second trip to the Caribbean Islands and wrote this novel among the scenes I have described.

Before going I advertised in the New York Herald "Personal" column for a typewriter to accompany me as private secretary. I received more than a hundred letters from women who desired the situation and interviewed quite a number of them. I decided, however, to go alone. (If the reader doesn't believe me I refer him to the passenger lists of the "Madiana" and "Pretoria.") The basis of this story, however, grew out of the advertisement and answers.

"Marjorie" and "Statia" have a genuine existence, and so have many of the other characters in this tale. I have used real people as an artist does his models, taking a little from one, a little from another, and a great deal from the vivid imagination with which nature has endowed me. I hope the result will be satisfactory to my friends, who have waited double the usual time for this novel.

My health seems wholly recovered and unless something unforeseen occurs my stories will continue to appear each July and January, as they have for the past ten years. This is the nineteenth volume of the "Albatross Series." I again send a too indulgent public my warmest thanks for their appreciation.

Very Truly,

ALBERT ROSS.

Cambridge, Mass., May, 1898.

A NEW SENSATION.