they took
her till she should be able to come home. It will depend on her
condition whether they bring her to-night or to-morrow or in a few days.
Meantime, if you like you may go up to your old room and wait until I
send for you. I shall have news soon and will let you know. Don't go
down to the servant's quarters, I wish to have you where I can call you
at a moment's notice."

Candace gave her ex-mistress a long, keen suspicious stare, pinned her
with a glance as steely as her own for an instant, in search of a
possible ulterior motive, and then turning on her little fat heel,
vanished like a small fast racer in the direction of her old room.

"Now," said Mrs. Stanhope, turning with a sigh of relief, "she's safe!
I'll set Marie to watch her and if there's anything going on between
those two Marie will find it out."

But Herbert Hutton was already sitting at his mother's desk with the
telephone book and calling up Long Distance.

All the long hours when he had expected to have been standing under the
rose bower downstairs in triumph with his bride, Herbert Hutton sat at
that telephone in his mother's boudoir alternately raging at his mother
and shouting futile messages over the 'phone. The ancient cousin of
Betty's mother was discovered to be seriously ill in a hospital and
unable to converse even through the medium of his nurse, so there was
nothing to be gained there. Messages to the public functionaries in his
town developed no news. Late into the night, or rather far toward the
morning, Bessemer was discovered at a cabaret where his persistent
mother and brother had traced him, too much befuddled with his evening's
carouse to talk connectedly. He declared Betty was a good old girl, but
she might go to thunder for all he cared; he knew a girl "worth twice of
her."

His mother turned with disgust from his babbling voice, convinced that
he knew nothing of Betty's whereabouts. Nevertheless, by means of a
financial system of threats and rewards which she had used on him
successfully for a number of years, she succeeded in impressing upon him
the necessity of coming home at once, and just as the pink was beginning
to dawn in the gray of the morning, Bessemer drove up in a hired car,
and stumbled noisily into the house, demanding to know where the wedding
was. He wanted to kiss the bride.

Candace, still in her stiff black silk, stood in the shadowy hall, as
near as she dared venture, and listened, with her head th