al! You mean--Larry is coming?"

"Sure," grinned Hunt. "That's why we celebrate."

Maggie wheeled upon the Duchess. "Is Larry really coming?"

"Yes," said the old woman.

"But--but why the uncertainty about when he was coming back? Father and
Barney thought he was due to get out yesterday."

"Just a mistake we all made about his release. His time was up this
afternoon."

"But you told Barney and my father you hadn't heard from him."

"I had heard," said the Duchess in her flat tone. "If they want to see
him they can see him to-morrow."

"When--when will he be here?"

"Any minute," said the Duchess.

Without a word Maggie whirled about and the next moment she was in her
room on the floor below. She did not know what prompted her, but she had
a frantic desire to get out of this plain shirt-waist and skirt and into
something that would be striking. She considered her scanty wardrobe;
her father had recently spoken of handsome gowns and furnishings, but as
yet these existed only in his words, and the pseudo-evening gowns which
she had worn to restaurant dances with Barney she knew to be cheap and
uneffective.

Suddenly she remembered the things Hunt had given her, or had loaned
her, the evening four months earlier when he had taken her to
an artists' masquerade ball--though to her it had been a bitter
disappointment when Hunt had carried her away before the unmasking at
twelve o'clock. She tore off the offending waist and skirt, pulled from
beneath the bed the pasteboard box containing her costume; and in five
minutes of flying hands the transformation was completed. Her thick hair
of burnished black was piled on top of her head in gracious disorder,
and from it swayed a scarlet paper flower. About her lithe body, over a
black satin skirt, swathing her in its graceful folds, clung a Spanish
shawl of saffron-colored background with long brown silken fringe, and
flowered all over with brown and red and peacock blue, and held in place
by three huge barbaric pins jeweled with colored glass, one at either
hip and upon her right shoulder, leaving her smooth shoulders bare and
free. With no more than a glance to get the hasty effect, she hurried up
to the studio.

Hunt whistled at sight of her, but made no remark. Flushed, she looked
back at him defiantly. The Duchess gave no sign whatever of being aware
of the transformation.

Maggie with excited touches tried to improve her setting of the
table, aquiver with exp