s handkerchief. "I was told--I was told--I came in a
carriage--a carriage is waiting--" He stopped, too exhausted to continue.

"Miss Hahlstroem cannot possibly appear this evening."

"Oh, Miss Hahlstroem looks very well!"

"See here," said Frederick ready to flare up.

Webster and Forster's agent put his hat back on his bald pate.

"It would be the greatest mistake if Miss Hahlstroem were not to dance
to-night," he said. "I was commissioned to provide her with money and
anything else she needed. There's my carriage. Rooms have already been
engaged for her at the Astor."

Frederick grew angry.

"I am a physician," he snapped, "and as a physician, I tell you Miss
Hahlstroem will not dance to-night, nor for several nights."

"Will you make good to Miss Hahlstroem her financial loss?"

"What I shall do in regard to that is neither your nor Webster and
Forster's business."

Frederick thought he had disposed of the matter, but the agent became
offensive.

"Who are you, sir? My dealings are with Miss Hahlstroem exclusively. What
right have you to mix in this affair?"

"I don't think I could dance to-night," Ingigerd interposed.

"You will lose that feeling as soon as you step on the stage. The
manager's wife gave me a letter for you. Her maid is at the Astor with
everything you need. She is entirely at your disposal."

"Our Petronilla is a jewel, too," Willy Snyders interjected. "If you
tell her what you need, Miss Hahlstroem, she'll have it for you in five
minutes." With the insistence of a seducer, he helped Ingigerd into the
cab.

"Very well, then," said the agent emphatically, "you are breaking a
contract, and I warn you of the consequences. I will have to ask you for
your address."

Willy Snyders shouted a number on 107th street. The agent jotted it down
in his note-book.

The cab with Ingigerd, Frederick, and Willy in it was transported from
Hoboken to New York in the usual way, jammed in between other carriages
and trucks on the ferry-boat. A newsboy on the ferry handed into the cab
a copy of _The Sun_, with whole columns already describing the disaster.
The authors of the information were probably the health officers and
Captain Butor. When Willy Snyders began to speak of the _Roland_,
Frederick checked him with a nod toward Ingigerd; but she had of herself
noticed the report in the paper and asked if they had been the first
to bring the news to New York.

"The _Roland_ was overdue more than thr