ever manage their expected re-exchange of
personalities in this awful mess.

Only seven days thus far. Three more months of this!

Three ... more ... months!...

But at length she slept; slept deeply, for she had the gift of sleep
in its perfection; slept a complete and flawless oblivion. So that
when she awoke Saturday, refreshed, and glanced blinking about from
her thin pillow she did not at first remember where she was. This
low room, four by seven feet, with a narrow bed penitentially hard, a
stationary wash-basin, a row of iron clothes-hooks, a foot-high oblong
window above her head--what was it? How had she come here? And had any
one ever before lived in such a cell?

Then memory came flooding back. This was her second maid's room.
She was Angelica Simpson Jones, sister of Matilda, a poor, diffident
creature with defective hearing and pitifully disfigured face. And in
the house were Mr. Pyecroft, and Jack and Mary, and Judge Harvey was a
frequent visitor. And besides these, there were all the other sources
of danger!

She was now poignantly awake.

While she was still in this process of realization, there was a soft
knock at her door and a whispered, "It's Matilda, ma'am," at her
keyhole. She unlocked the door, admitted Matilda, and crept back
into her second maid's bed. They gazed at each other a moment without
speaking. Matilda's face was gray with awe and helpless woe.

They whispered about their predicament. What should they do? Should
they flee again?--and how?--and where?--and what good would flight do
them, especially since Mr. Pyecroft might once more follow? Twice they
had leaped from the frying-pan, and each time had landed in a fire
hotter than the one preceding. A third flight might drop them into a
fire worse even than this in which they now sizzled.

And as for the specific plan which had brought them back--for Mrs. De
Peyster to steal unnoticed into her suite and hide there--that seemed
impossible of achievement with all these people circulating about the
house, especially that all-observing Mr. Pyecroft. If Mr. Pyecroft
should catch her in one suspicious move, then his quick mind would
deduce the rest, and everything would be up--everything!

There was, of course, yet another way--to give up and disclose her
identity herself. But she was now far, far too deeply involved:
to confess and thus by her own act bring limitless and appalling
humiliation on herself, this was unthinkable! She mu