ssible to
confuse with her whom he sought: a lady well past middle-age, with the
dignity and poise consistent with her years, her manifest breeding and
her iron-gray hair.

"Mr. Whitaker?"

He bowed, conscious that he was being narrowly scrutinized, nicely
weighed in the scales of a judgment prejudiced, if at all, not in his
favor.

"I am Mrs. Secretan, a friend of Miss Law's. She has asked me to say
that she begs to be excused, at least for to-night. She has suffered a
severe shock and is able to see nobody."

"I understand--and I'm sorry," said Whitaker, swallowing his chagrin.

"And I am further instructed to ask if you will be good enough to leave
your address."

"Certainly: I'm stopping at the Ritz-Carlton; but"--he demurred--"I
should like to leave a note, if I may--?"

Mrs. Secretan nodded an assent. "You will find materials in the desk
there," she added, indicating an escritoire.

Thanking her, Whitaker sat down, and, after some hesitation, wrote a few
lines:

"Please don't think I mean to cause you the slightest inconvenience
or distress. I shall be glad to further your wishes in any way you
may care to designate. Please believe in my sincere regret...."

Signing and folding this, he rose and delivered it to Mrs. Secretan.

"Thank you," he said with a ceremonious bow.

The customary civilities were scrupulously observed.

He found himself in the street, with his trouble for all reward for his
pains. He wondered what to do, where to go, next. There was in his mind
a nagging thought that he ought to do something or other, somehow or
other, to find Drummond and make him understand that he, Whitaker, had
no desire or inclination to stand in his light; only, let the thing be
consummated decently, as privately as possible, with due deference to
the law....

The driver of the taxicab was holding the door for him, head bent to
catch the address of the next stop. But his fare lingered still in
doubt.

Dimly he became aware of the violent bawlings of a brace of news-vendors
who were ramping through the street, one on either sidewalk. Beyond two
words which seemed to be intended for "extra" and "tragedy" their cries
were as inarticulate as they were deafening.

At the spur of a vague impulse, bred of an incredulous wonder if the
papers were already noising abroad the news of the fiasco at the Theatre
Max, Whitaker stopped one of the men and purchased a paper. It was
delivered into his