Lady Mount-Rhyswicke maintained silence for a time, while her companion
waited, his heart pounding with dreadful apprehensions. Finally she gave
a short, hard laugh and said:

"I saw your face by the corner light. Been havin' a hard day of it?"

The fear of breaking down kept him from answering. He gulped painfully
once or twice, and turned his face away from her. Light enough from a
streetlamp shone in for her to see.

"I was rather afraid you'd refuse," she said seriously. "Really, I
wonder you were willin' to come!"

"I was--I was afraid not to." He choked out the confession with the
recklessness of final despair.

"So?" she said, with another short laugh. Then she resumed her even,
tired monotone: "Your little friend Cooley's note this morning gave us
all a rather fair notion as to what you must be thinkin' of us. He seems
to have found a sort of walkin' 'Who's-Who-on-the-Continent' since last
night. Pity for some people he didn't find it before! I don't think I'm
sympathetic with your little Cooley. I 'guess,' as you Yankees say, 'he
can stand it.' But"--her voice suddenly became louder--"I'm not in the
business of robbin' babies and orphans, no, my dear friends, nor of
helpin' anybody else to rob them either!--Here you are!"

She thrust into his hand a small packet, securely wrapped in paper and
fastened with rubber bands. "There's your block of express checks for
six hundred dollars and your I O U to Sneyd with it. Take better care of
it next time."

He had been tremulous enough, but at that his whole body began to shake
violently.

"_What_!" he quavered.

"I say, take better care of it next time," she said, dropping again into
her monotone. "I didn't have such an easy time gettin' it back from them
as you might think. I've got rather a sore wrist, in fact."

She paused at an inarticulate sound from him.

"Oh, that's soon mended," she laughed drearily. "The truth is, it's been
a good thing for me--your turning up. They're gettin' in too deep water
for me, Helene and her friends, and I've broken with the lot, or they've
broken with me, whichever it is. We couldn't hang together after the
fightin' we've done to-day. I had to do a lot of threatenin' and things.
Welch was ugly, so I had to be ugly too. Never mind"--she checked an
uncertain effort of his to speak--"I saw what you were like, soon as
we sat down at the table last night--how new you were and all that. It
needed only a glance to see that Hel