add something more, when the two girls came on into
the room diffidently and stood by the great carved table, close
together, as if prepared to cling to one another in case something
extraordinary happened. Travers Gladwin was the first of the two young
men to come to their rescue.

"Pardon me! Did you wish to see me?" he said with his best bow.

"No," replied Helen Burton quickly, her lips trembling; "we want to
see Mr. Gladwin, please."

The young man did not recover instantly from this staggering jolt, and
a clock somewhere in the great hall nearby ticked a dozen strokes
before he managed to mumble:

"Well--er--I am"--

"Isn't he here?" broke in the brown-haired beauty, breathlessly. "His
man just asked us to come into this room to see him."

"What Mr. Gladwin did you want?" asked that young man incoherently.

"Why, Mr. Travers Gladwin!" exclaimed the girl indignantly, the color
mantling to her forehead. "Is there more than one?"

"Well--er--that is," the young man turned desperately to his friend,
"do you know Mr. Gladwin?"

"Do I know him?" cried Helen Burton, and then, with a hysterical
little laugh as she turned to her cousin, "I should think I did know
him. I know him very, very well."

Sadie Burton appeared both distressed and frightened and slipped
limply down into one of the great chairs beside her. As Travers
Gladwin's features passed through a series of vacant and bewildered
expressions and as the attention of Whitney Barnes seemed to be
focussed with strange intensity upon the prettiness of the shy and
silent Sadie, anger flashed in Helen's expressive eyes as she again
addressed the young man, who felt as if some mysterious force had just
robbed him of his identity.

"You don't suppose," she said, drawing herself to the full height of
her graceful figure, "that I would come here to see Travers Gladwin if
I didn't know him, do you?"

"No, no, no--of course not!" sputtered the young man. "It was stupid
of me to ask such a question. Please forgive me. I--er"--

Helen turned from him as if to speak to Sadie, who sat with erect
primness suffering from what she sensed as a strange and overpowering
stroke. She had permitted herself to look straight into the eyes of
Whitney Barnes and hold the look for a long, palpitating second.

While Sadie was groping in her mind for some explanation of the
strange thrill, Whitney Barnes had flung himself headlong into a new
sensation and was determined to mak