ce would look; but there was too much at stake.
Not only would I hate to have him scorn me for an eavesdropper, but I
had already built up a great plan for the use I could make of what I had
overheard.

CHAPTER III

LISA MAKES MISCHIEF

When Ivor was safely out of the room, my first thought was to escape
from behind the lounge, and get upstairs to my own quarters. But just as
I had sat up, very cramped and wretched, with one foot and one arm
asleep, Lord Mountstuart came in again, and down I had to duck.

He had brought a friend, who was as mad about old books and first
editions, as he; a stuffy, elderly thing, who had never seen Lord
Mountstuart's treasures before. As both were perfectly daft on the
subject, they must have kept me lying there an hour, while they fussed
about from one glass-protected book-case to another, murmuring
admiration of Caxtons, or discussing the value of a Mazarin Bible, with
their noses in a lot of old volumes which ought to have been eaten up by
moths long ago. As for me, I should have been delighted to set fire to
the whole lot.

At last Lord Mountstuart (whom I've nicknamed "Stewey") remembered that
there was a ball going on, and that he was the host. So he and the other
duffer pottered away, leaving the coast clear and the door wide open. It
was just my luck (which is always bad and always has been) that a pair
of flirting idiots, for whom the conservatory, or our "den," or the
stairs, wasn't secluded enough, must needs be prying about and spy that
open door before I had conquered my cramps and got up from behind the
sofa.

The dim light commended itself to their silliness, and after hesitating
a minute, the girl--whoever she was--allowed herself to be drawn into a
room where she had no business to be. Then, to make bad worse, they
selected the lounge to sit upon, and I had to lie closely wedged against
the wall, with "pins and needles" pricking all over my cramped body,
while some man I didn't know proposed and was accepted by some girl I
shall probably never see.

They continued to sit, making a tremendous fuss about each other, until
voices were "heard off," as they say in the directions for theatricals,
whereupon they sprang up and hurried out like "guilty things upon a
fearful summons."

By that time I was more dead than alive, but I did manage to crawl out
of my prison, and creep up to my room by a back stairway which the
servants use. But it was very late now, an