lady back, Miss?"

"Oh, I'm not sure," said I very lightly, but with a curious sinking at
my heart. What was the meaning of the manager's visit? Was he only just
looking in to pass the time of day with the maid of one of his patrons?
Or--horrible thought!--did he imagine that there was something not quite
usual about Miss Million?

Had he, too, wondered over our arriving at the hotel with those old
clothes and those new trunks? And now was he keeping an eye on whatever
Miss Million meant to do? For all his pleasant manner, he did look as
if he thought something about her were distinctly "fishy"!

I said brightly: "She may stay away for a few days."

"A little change into the country, I expect? Do anybody good this stuffy
weather," said the affable manager. "Going down to join her, I expect,
aren't you?"

This was a poser, but I answered, I think, naturally enough. I said:
"Well, I'm waiting to hear from her first if she wants me!"

And I nodded quite cheerily at the manager as he passed again down the
corridor.

I trust he hadn't even a suspicion of the uneasy anxiety that he had
left behind him in the heart of Miss Million's maid!

What a perfectly awful day this has been! Quite the most awful that I've
ever lived through in all my twenty-three years of life!

I thought it was quite bad enough when all I had to bear was the gnawing
anxiety over Million's disappearance, and the suspense of waiting,
waiting, waiting for news of her! Living for the sound of the telephone
bell ... sitting up here in her room, feeling as if three years had
elapsed between each of my lonely hotel meals ... wondering, wondering
over and over again what in the world became of her since I saw my young
mistress at the Supper Club last night....

But now I've something worse to bear. Something far more appalling has
happened!

I felt a presentiment that something horrible and unforeseen might
occur, even before the first visit of the manager, with his suspicious
glance, to Miss Million's room.

For I'd wandered downstairs, in my loneliness, to talk to the girl in
the telephone exchange.

She's a bright-eyed, chatty creature who sits there all day under the
big board with the lights that appear and disappear like glowworms
twinkling on a lawn. She always seems to have a cup of tea and a plate
of toast at her elbow.

She also seems always to have five minutes for a chat. And she's taken a
sort of fancy to me; already she's confide