rs. De Peyster's
suite these days flew by with honeymoon rapidity; within, they
lingered, and clung on, and seemed determined never to go, as is
time's malevolent practice with those imprisoned. Mrs. De Peyster
could hear Mary practicing, and practicing hard--and, yes,
brilliantly. As for Jack, Matilda told her on her later visits--and
her later bundles contained a larger and more palatable supply of food
than had the first package--Matilda said that Jack, too, was working
hard. Furthermore, Matilda admitted, the pair were having the jolliest
of honeymoons.

And a further thing Matilda told on her third furtive, after-midnight
visit. This concerned Mr. Pyecroft. Mr. Pyecroft, it seemed, was
becoming an even greater favorite with Jack and Mary--particularly
with Mary. He had confided to them that he was weary of his escapades,
and wanted to settle down; in fact, there was a girl--the nicest girl
in the world, begging Mary's pardon--who had promised to marry him as
soon as he had become launched in honorable work. The trouble was, he
knew that no business man would employ him in a responsible capacity,
and so his last departures from strict rectitude had been for the
purpose of securing the capital to set himself up in some small but
independent way.

His story, Matilda admitted, had captured Mary's heart.

Judge Harvey, however, still smarting under his indignity, would on
his evening calls scarcely speak to Mr. Pyecroft. Nonetheless, Mr.
Pyecroft had continued regretful and polite. Once or twice, Judge
Harvey, forgetting his resentment, had been drawn into discussions
of points of law with Mr. Pyecroft. To Matilda, who, of course, knew
nothing about law, it had seemed that Mr. Pyecroft talked almost as
well as the Judge himself. But the Judge, the instant he remembered
himself, resumed his ire toward Mr. Pyecroft.

Thus three days, in which it seemed to Mrs. De Peyster that Time stood
still and taunted her,--each day exactly like the day before, a day
of half starvation, of tiptoed, breathless routine,--days in which she
spoke not a word save a whisper or two at midnight at the food-bearing
visit of the sad-visaged Matilda,--three dull, diabolic days dragged
by their interminable length of hours. Such days!--such awful, awful
days!

On Matilda's fourth visit with her usual bundle of pilferings from the
pantry, Mrs. De Peyster observed in the manner of that disconsolate
pirate a great deal of suppressed agitation-