-sitting in the sky.'"

"Come in and say it to my aunt," Olivia applauded. "Aunt Dora is
dying of ennui up here."

They crossed the terrace in the hush of the tropic night. Through
the fairy black and silver the four figures moved, and it was as if
the king's palace--that sky thing, with ramparts of air--had at
length found expression and knew a way to answer the ancient
glamourie of the moon.

CHAPTER XV

A VIGIL

Upon Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Augustus Frothingham, drowsing over the
pocket chess-board, the sound of footsteps and men's voices in the
corridor acted with electrical effect. Then the door was opened and
behind Olivia and Antoinette appeared the two visitors who seemed to
have fallen from the neighbouring heavens. The two chess-pretenders
looked up aghast. If there were a place in the world where
chaperonage might be relaxed the uninformed observer would say that
it would be the top of Mount Khalak.

"Mercy around us!" cried Mrs. Medora Hastings, "if it isn't that
newspaper man! He's probably come over here to cable it all over the
front page of every paper in New York. Well," she added
complacently, as if she had brought it all about, "it seems good to
see some of your own race. How _did_ you get here? Some trick, I
suppose?"

"My dear fellows," burst out Mr. Augustus Frothingham fervently,
"thank God! I'm not, ordinarily, unequal to my situations, but I
confess to you, as I would not to a client, that I don't object to
sharing this one. How did you come?"

"It's a house-party!" said Antoinette ecstatically.

Amory looked at her in her blue gown in the light of the white room,
and his spirits soared heavenward. Why should St. George have an
idea that he controlled the hour?

From a tumult of questioning, none of which was fully answered
before Mrs. Hastings put another query, the lawyer at length
elicited the substance of what had occurred.

"You came up the side of the mountain, carried by four of those
frightful natives?" shrilled Mrs. Hastings. "Olivia, think. It's a
wonder they didn't murder you first and throw you over afterward,
isn't it, Olivia? Oh, and my poor dear brother. To think of his
lying somewhere all mangled and bl--"

Emotion overcame Mrs. Hastings. Her tortoise-shell glasses fell to
her lap and both her side-combs tinkled melodiously to the tiled
floor.

"This reminds me," said Mr. Frothingham, settling back and finding a
pencil with which to emphasize his story,