ere's a chance of this it mustn't go further. I shall have to keep
my mouth shut.

I can't go applying to the police--and then having Miss Million turning
up and looking more than foolish! Then scolding her maid for being such
a fool!

That stops my telling anybody else about my fearful anxiety--the mess
I'm in!

Oh! Won't I tell Million what I think of her and her friends--all of
them, Fourcastles, the cobra-woman, "London's Love," the giggling
theatrical girls, and that unscrupulous nouveau-pauvre pirate, the
Honourable Jim--as soon as she does condescend to reappear!...

A tap at the door. I fly to open it....

Only one of those little chocolate-liveried London sparrows, the Cecil
page-boys.

He has a large parcel for Miss Million. From Madame Ellen's. (Oh, yes,
of course. The blush-rose pink that had to be let out.) Carriage
forward.

"Please have it paid and charge it to Miss Million's account," says Miss
Million's maid, with great outward composure and an inward tremor.

I've no money. Three-and-six, to be exact. Everything she has is locked
up. What--what am I to do about the bills if she stays away like this?

She seems to have been away a century. Yet it's only half-past twelve
now. In half an hour Mr. Brace will be calling on me for an answer to
his proposal of marriage....

There's another complication!

Oh! Why is life like this? Long dull stretches of nothing at all
happening for years and years. Then, quite suddenly, "a crowded hour"
of--No! Not "glorious life" exactly. But one disturbing thing happening
on the top of another, until----

"Ppppring!"

Ah, the telephone again. Perhaps this is some news. The cobra-lady may
have heard where Miss Million went.... "Yes?"

It wasn't the cobra-lady.

It was the rich, untrustworthy accent of the Honourable James Burke.

Ah! At last! At last! Now, I thought, I should hear something; some hint
of Miss Million's whereabouts.

"Yes?" I called eagerly.

"Yes! I know who that is," called the voice--how different, now that I
heard it again, from that of the Mr. J. Burke I rang up earlier, by
mistake. "That's the pearl of all ladies'-maids, isn't it? Good
morning, Miss Lovelace-Smith!"

"Good morning, Mr. Burke," I called back grudgingly. Aggravating young
man! How was I to find out what I wanted to know without possibly giving
my mistress away?

Perhaps he had been sent to ring me up to bring Miss Million's things
to--wherever the party