to leave at once."

"But--oh, I am sorry. Shall I help you pack?"

"Thank you, no--yes--no!"

The maid went out with eyes popping, wondering what earthquake had
sent the guest home alone for such a headlong exit.

Things flew in the drowsy house, and Marie Louise's chamber looked
like the show-room of a commercial traveler for a linen-house when
Polly appeared at the door and gasped:

"What in the name of--I didn't know you were sick enough to be
delirious!"

She came forward through an archipelago of clothes to where Marie
Louise was bending over a trunk. Polly took an armload of things away
from her and put them back in the highboy. As she set her arms akimbo
and stood staring at Marie Louise with a lovable and loving insolence,
she heard the sound of a car rattling round the driveway, and her
first words were:

"Who's coming here at this hour?"

"That's the taxi for me," Marie Louise explained.

Polly turned to the maid, "Go down and send it away--no, tell the
driver to go to the asylum for a strait-jacket."

The maid smiled and left. Marie Louise was afraid to believe her own
hopes.

"You don't mean you want me to stay, do you--not after what that woman
said?"

"Do you imagine for a moment," returned Polly, "that I'd ever believe
a word that cat could utter? Good Lord! if Lady Clifton-Wyatt told me
it was raining and I could see it was, I'd know it wasn't and put down
my umbrella."

Marie Louise rejoiced at the trust implied, but she could not make a
fool of so loyal a friend. She spoke with difficulty:

"What if what she said was the truth, or, anyway, a kind of burlesque
of it?"

"Marie Louise!" Polly gasped, and plounced into a chair. "Tell me the
truth this minute, the true truth."

Marie Louise was perishing for a confidante. She had gone about as far
without one as a normal woman can. She sat wondering how to begin,
twirling her rings on her fingers. "Well, you see--you see--it is true
that I'm not Sir Joseph's daughter. I was born in a little village--in
America--Wakefield--out there in the Middle West. I ran away from
home, and--"

She hesitated, blanched, blushed, skipped over the years she tried not
to think of and managed never to speak of. She came down to:

"Well, anyway, at last I was in Berlin--on the stage--"

"You were an actress?" Polly gasped.

Marie Louise confessed, "Well, I'd hardly say that."

She told Polly what she had told Mr. Verrinder of the appearance of
Si