rican cousin.

I had nothing whatever to do with her rejected admirer, or how he was
treated.

I was merely Miss Million's maid, Beatrice Lovelace, alias Smith, with
an eligible love affair of her own on hand. How I wished my Mr. Reginald
Brace could have been anywhere get-at-able! He would have been so
splendid, so reliable!

He would have--well, I don't know what he could have done, exactly. I
suppose that even he could scarcely have interfered with the carrying
out of the law! Still, I felt that it would have been a great comfort to
have had him there in that car.

And, as I am going to be engaged to him, there would have been nothing
incorrect in allowing him to hold my hand. In fact, I should have done
so. I hadn't got any gloves with me, and the night air was now chill.

"Why, your little hands are as cold as ice, Miss Smith," murmured Mr.
James Burke to me as the car stopped at last outside what are called the
grim portals of justice. (Plenty of grimness about the portals, anyway!)
"You ought to have kept----"

Even at that awful moment he made me wonder if he were really going to
say, boldly out before the detective and everybody: "You ought to have
kept your hands in mine as I wanted you to!"

But no. He had the grace to conclude smoothly and conventionally: "You
ought to have kept the rug up about you!"

Then came "Good-nights"--rather a mockery under the circumstances--and
the departure of the two young men, with a great many parting protests
from Mr. Hiram P. Jessop about the "prepassterousness" of the whole
procedure. Then we arrested "prisoners" were taken down a loathsome
stone corridor and handed over to a----

Words fail me, as they failed Mr. Hiram P. Jessop. I can't think of
words unpleasant enough to describe the odiousness of that particular
wardress into whose charge we were given.

The only excuse for her was that she imagined--why, I don't know, for
surely she could have seen that there was nothing of that type about
either Miss Million or Miss Smith--she imagined that we were militant
Suffragettes!

And she certainly did make herself disagreeable to us.

The one mercy about this was that it braced Miss Million up to abstain
from shedding tears--which she seemed inclined to do when we were
separated.

Words didn't fail her! I heard the ex-maid-servant's clearest kitchen
accent announcing exactly what she thought of "that" wardress and "that"
detective, and "that there old Rattenh