n't
over-strong. I confess I have a horror of night alarms. I travel a good
deal, and have got in the habit of carrying a pistol. However, all's well
that ends well. I apologize to you, and to Miss Grayle. When I know you
better, I hope you'll allow me to make up by congratulating you both on
your engagement."

As he spoke, in his prim, old-fashioned way, he began to descend the
stairs, taking off his hat, as if to join the girl whom in thought he had
wronged for an instant. "Nelson Smith" followed, smiling at Annesley over
the elder man's high, narrow head sparsely covered with lank hair of
fading brown.

It was at this moment Mrs. Ellsworth chose to appear, habited once more
in a hurriedly donned dressing gown, a white silk scarf substituted in
haste for a discarded nightcap. Panting with anger, and fierce with
curiosity, she had forgotten her rheumatism and abandoned her martyred
hobble for a waddling run.

Thus she pounced out at the foot of the stairway, and was upon the girl
before the three absorbed actors in the scene had heard the shuffling
feet in woollen slippers.

"What does this mean?" she quavered, so close to Annesley's ear that the
girl wheeled with a start of renewed alarm. "Who's this strange man in my
house? What's this talk about 'engagements'?"

"A strange man!" echoed Ruthven Smith, prickling with suspicion again.
"Haven't you met him, Miss Grayle's fiance?"

"Miss Grayle's fiddlesticks!" shrilled the old woman. "The girl's a
baggage, a worthless baggage! In my room just now she _struck_ me--beat
my poor rheumatic knuckles! For five years I've sheltered her, given her
the best of everything, even to the clothes she has on her back. This is
the way she repays me--with insults and cruelty, and smuggles strange men
secretly into my house at night, and pretends to be engaged to them!"

The dark young man in evening dress passed the lean figure in travelling
clothes without a word and, putting Annesley gently aside, stepped
between her and Mrs. Ellsworth.

"There is no question of 'pretending'," he said, sternly. "Miss Grayle
has promised to marry me. If our engagement has been kept a secret, it's
only because the right moment hadn't come for announcing it. I entered
your house for a few moments to-night, for the first time, on an errand
which seemed important, as Mr. Ruthven Smith will explain. I don't feel
called upon to apologize for my presence in the face of your attitude to
Miss Grayle.