ng to do! We must leave the house!"

"I think we'd better, ma'am," Matilda snuffled hysterically, "for with
all of you here, and this keeping up, I--I don't think I'd last a day,
ma'am."

"And we must leave at once! We've not a second to spare. They said
they were coming right down. We must be out of the house before they
come!"

"Oh, ma'am, yes! This minute! But where--"

"There's no time to think of anything now but getting out," cried Mrs.
De Peyster with frantic energy. "Slip up the front stairway, Matilda,
and get your hat. And here are my keys. Lock my sitting-room, so they
can't see any one's been living in it. You can manage it without them
seeing you. And for heaven's sake, hurry!"

Two minutes later these things were done, and Matilda, bonneted, was
hurrying forward hand in hand with Mrs. De Peyster through the black
hallway of the basement. Behind them, descending the stairs from
the butler's pantry, sounded the chatter and laughter of the larking
honeymooners; and then from the kitchen came the surprised and
exasperated call: "Hello, Matilda--See here, where the dickens are
you?"

But at just that moment the twin, unbreathing figures in black slipped
through the servants' door and noiselessly closed it behind them.

CHAPTER IX

THE FLIGHT

The two dark figures stood an instant, breathless, in the dark mouth
of the cavern beneath the marble balustraded stairway that ascended
with chaste dignity to Mrs. De Peyster's noble front door. Swiftly
they surveyed the scene. Not a policeman was in sight: no one save,
across the way on Washington Square benches, a few plebeian lovers
enjoying the soft calm of a May eleven o'clock.

The pair, with veils down, each looking a plagiarism of the other,
slipped out of the servants' entrance, through the gate of the low
iron fence, and arm clutching arm hastened eastward to University
Place. Thus far no one had challenged them. Here they turned and went
rapidly northward: past the Lafayette, where Mrs. De Peyster's impulse
to take a taxicab was instantly countermanded by the fear that so
near her home there was danger of recognition: and onward, onward
they went, swiftly, wordlessly, their one commanding impulse to get
away--to get away.

At Fourteenth Street they passed a policeman. Again they choked back
their breath; shiveringly they felt his eyes upon them. And, indeed,
his eyes were--interestedly; for to that Hibernian, with his native
whimsicality