action and
has been doing a little stunt all by itself. Better get to work on it
and plough up a new book. I don't doubt Mary has political friends in
Austria, and corresponds with them. Why shouldn't she? But she's not
committed to any definite date or action. I'll swear to that. She'd
have told me so honestly."

"Very well. I've said my say. But I wish----" She fell silent and
sat very still for several moments regarding the point of her slipper.
Then she looked up and said brightly: "Don't you think it's time to let
the rest of them know what's going to happen? It's hardly fair to your
other friends--and they are your friends, Clavey. Of course they are
practically certain of it."

"I don't think she'll mind, particularly as the first sensation has
pretty well run its course--she thought she'd spare her own friends two
shocks at once. But I fancy she intends to go out among them less and
less. I'll ask her, and if she agrees, suppose you announce it?"

Miss Dwight bent down and removed a pinch of ashes from her slipper.
"Do--persuade her. It would be a tremendous feather in my cap. I'll
give you both a dinner and announce it then."

"Settled. Well, I'm off. Got my column to write." He gathered up his
manuscript, and she went to the door with him. As he held her hand, he
felt one of those subtle whispers along his nerves that had warned him
of danger before. He dropped her hand with a frown.

"Look here, Gora," he said. "You haven't any mistaken idea of
appealing to _her_, have you?"

"What do you take me for?" demanded Miss Dwight angrily. "The father
in _Camille_?"

"Well, keep off the grass, that's all. Ta, ta."

XL

When Mary Zattiany returned home at twelve o'clock after a tiresome
morning in Judge Trent's office she told the butler to send her
luncheon upstairs, and ascended to the seclusion of her room, delighted
with the prospect of a few hours she could call her own. These hours
had been increasing during the past fortnight but were no less welcome.
Not a word of that dinner was known to any but those who had attended
it. People do not foul their own nest unless they are ready to desert
it and sometimes not then. Moreover, the women were too ashamed or too
humiliated with their failure to invite the criticism of their friends,
and although they avoided the subject among themselves, their agreement
to bury it was no less final for being tacit. The men, with something