and party?
I knew that this would be a shocking proposition to him, but I was
prepared to meet all objections; and when, with every nerve alert and
every charm exerted to its utmost, I sat down at his side that evening
to plead my cause, I knew by the sparkle of his eye and the softening of
the bitter lines that sometimes hardened his mouth, that the battle was
half won before I spoke, and that I should have my party whatever it
might cost him in mental stress and worry.

Perhaps he was glad to find me given over to folly at a time when he was
waiting for a miracle to release him from the net of crime in which he
had involved himself; perhaps he merely thought it would please me,
and aid him to thus strengthen our position in the social world before
taking our flight to a foreign land; but whatever lay at the bottom of
his amenity, he gave me _carte blanche_ that night for an entertainment
that should embrace all his friends and mine and some of Mrs. Vandyke's.
So I saw that doubt removed.

The next thing I did was to procure a _facsimile_ of his key from the
wax impression I had taken of it in accordance with my promise to Mrs.
Ransome. Then I wrote her a letter, in which I gave her the minutest
directions as to her own movements on that important evening. After
which I gave myself up entirely to the business of the party. Certain
things I had insisted on. All the rooms were to be opened, even those
on the third floor; and I was to have a band to play in the hall. He did
not deny me anything. I think his judgment was asleep, or else he was so
taken up with the horrible problem presented by his desire to leave
the city and the existence of those obligations which made departure an
impossibility, that he failed to place due stress on matters which, at
another time, might very well seem to threaten the disclosure of his
dangerous secret.

At last the night came.

An entertainment given in this great house had aroused much interest.
Most of our invitations had been accepted, and the affair promised to
be brilliant. As a bride, I wore white, and when, at the moment of going
downstairs, my husband suddenly clasped about my neck a rich necklace
of diamonds, I was seized by such a bitter sense of the contrast between
appearances and the awful reality underlying these festivities, that I
reeled in his arms, and had to employ all the arts which my dangerous
position had taught me, to quiet his alarm, and convince him that my