you'd have earned that kiss I'm going to give you."

Erebus gazed at him with murderous eyes, and said in a sinister tone:
"Oh, I helped to get it."

CHAPTER II

GUARDIAN ANGELS

At seven o'clock Captain Baster took his leave to dine at his inn. Of
his own accord he promised faithfully to return at nine sharp. He left
the house a proud and happy man, for he knew that he had been shining
before Mrs. Dangerfield with uncommon brilliance.

He was not by any means blind to her charm and beauty, for though she
was four years older than he, she contrived never to look less than two
years younger, and that without any aid from the cosmetic arts. But he
chiefly saw in her an admirable ladder to those social heights to which
his ardent soul aspired to climb. She had but to return to the polite
world from which the loss of her husband and her straightened
circumstances had removed her, to find herself a popular woman with a
host of friends in the exalted circles Captain Baster burned to adorn.
Yet it must not for a moment be supposed that he was proposing a
mercenary marriage for her; he was sure that she loved him, for he felt
rather than knew that with women he was irresistible.

It was not love, however, that knitted Mrs. Dangerfield's brow in a
troubled frown as she dressed; nor was it love that caused her to
select to wear that evening one of her oldest and dowdiest gowns, a
gown with which she had never been truly pleased. The troubled air did
not leave her face during dinner; and it seemed to affect the Twins,
for they, too, were gloomy. They were pleased, indeed, with the
beginning of the campaign, but still very doubtful of success in the
end. Where their interests were concerned their mother was of a
firmness indeed hard to move.

Moreover, she kept looking at them in an odd considering fashion that
disturbed them, especially at the Terror. Erebus in a pretty light
frock of her mother's days of prosperity, which had been cut down and
fitted to her, was a sight to brighten any one's eyes; but the sleeves
of the dark coat which the Terror wore on Sundays and on gala evenings,
bared a length of wrist distressing to a mother's eye.

The fine high spirits of Captain Baster were somewhat dashed by his
failure to find his keys and open his portmanteau, since he would be
unable to ravish Mrs. Dangerfield's eye that evening by his
distinguished appearance in the unstained evening dress of an English
gent