say herself, and found herself hopelessly muzzled.

"No wonder Mr. Bilton preferred heaven," thought Anna-Felicitas, also a
little restless at the completeness of her muzzling.

"Anyhow she'll never hear the Annas saying anything," thought Mr. Twist,
consoling himself.

"This hotel we're going to seems to be located at some distance from
the station," said Mrs. Bilton presently, in the middle of several pages
of rapid unpunctuated monologue. "Isolated, surely--" and off she went
again to other matters, just as Mr. Twist had got his mouth open to
explain at last.

She arrived therefore at the cottage unconscious of the change in her
fate.

Now Mrs. Bilton was as fond of comfort as any other woman who has been
deprived for some years of that substitute for comfort, a husband. She
had looked forward to the enveloping joys of the Cosmopolitan, its bath,
its soft bed and good food, with frank satisfaction. She thought it
admirable that before embarking on active duties she should for a space
rest luxuriously in an excellent hotel, with no care in regard to
expense, and exchange ideas while she rested with the interesting people
she would be sure to meet in it. Before the interview in Los Angeles,
Mr. Twist had explained to her by letter and under the seal of
confidence the philanthropic nature of the project he and the Miss
Twinklers were engaged upon, and she was prepared, in return for the
very considerable salary she had accepted, to do her duty loyally and
unremittingly; but after the stress and hard work of her last days in
Los Angeles she had certainly looked forward with a particular pleasure
to two or three weeks' delicious wallowing in flesh-pots for which she
had not to pay. She was also, however, a lady of grit; and she
possessed, as she said her friends often told her, a redoubtable psyche,
a genuine American free and fearless psyche; so that when, talking
ceaselessly, her thoughts eagerly jostling each other as they streamed
through her brain to get first to the exit of her tongue, she caught her
foot in some builder's debris carelessly left on the path up to the
cottage and received in this way positively her first intimation that
this couldn't be the Cosmopolitan, she did not, as a more timid female
soul well might have, become alarmed and suppose that Mr. Twist, whom
after all she didn't know, had brought her to this solitary place for
purposes of assassination, but stopped firmly just where she was, and