ack. "That's why
we're here."

"Why you're here?" repeated Mrs. De Peyster in a low, dazed tone.

"Yes." Jack gave a gleeful, excited laugh. "I had an inspiration how
to economize. Says I to Mary, 'Mary, since mother is away, and this
big house is empty except for you, Matilda, why pay rent?' So here
we are, and here we're going to live all summer--on the '_q t_,' of
course." He slipped an arm about Mary and one about Mrs. De Peyster,
and again laughed his gleeful, excited laugh. "Just you, and Mary, and
me--and, oh, say, Matilda, won't it be a lark!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE HONEYMOONERS

Again Jack's arm tightened about Mrs. De Peyster in his convulsive
glee, and again he exclaimed, "Oh, Matilda, won't it be a lark!"

Only the embrace of Jack's good left arm kept Mrs. De Peyster from
subsiding into a jellied heap upon her parqueted floor. It had ever
been her pride, and a saying of her admirers, that she always rose
equal to every emergency. But at the present moment she had not a
thought, had not a single distinct sensation. She was wildly, weakly,
terrifyingly dizzy--that was all; and her only self-control, if the
paralysis of an organ may be called controlling it, was that she held
her tongue.

Fortunately, at first, there was little necessity for her speaking.
The bride and groom were too joyously loquacious to allow her much
chance for words, and too bubbling over with their love and with the
spirit of daring mischief to be observant of any strangeness in her
demeanor that the darkness did not mask. As they chattered on, Mrs.
De Peyster began to regain some slight steadiness--enough to consider
spasmodically how she was to escape undiscovered from the pair, how
she was to extricate herself from the predicament of the moment--for
beyond that moment's danger she had not the power to think. She had
decided that she must somehow get away from the couple at once; in the
darkness slip unobserved into her sitting-room; lock the door; remain
there noiseless;--she had decided so much, when suddenly her wits were
sent spinning by a new fear.

The real Matilda! Mrs. De Peyster's ears, at that moment frantically
acute, registered dim movements of Matilda overhead.

Suppose the real Matilda should hear their voices; suppose she should
come walking down into the scene! With two Matildas simultaneously
upon the stage--

Mrs. De Peyster reached out and clutched the banister of the stairway
with drowning hands.