ad given orders that she was to be denied to gentlemen friends.

No, she never said anything about ladies. (This I thought highly
probable.) But if I were anything to her and chose to take the
responsibility--I chose and I did. In five minutes I was in Aunt
Elizabeth's room, and had turned the key upon an interview which was
briefer but more startling than I could possibly have anticipated.

Elizabeth Talbert is one of those women whose attraction increases with
the negligee or the deshabille. She was so pretty in her pink kimono
that she half disarmed me. She had been crying, and had a gentle look.

When I said, "Where is he?" and when she said, "If you mean Harry
Goward--I don't know," I was prepared to believe her without evidence.
She looked too pretty to doubt. Besides, I cannot say that I have ever
caught Aunt Elizabeth in a real fib. She may be a "charmian," but I
don't think she is a liar. Yet I pushed my case severely.

"If you and he hadn't taken that 5.40 train to New York--"

"We didn't take the 5.40 train," retorted Elizabeth Talbert, hotly. "It
took us. You don't suppose--but I suppose you do, and I suppose I know
what the whole family supposes--As if I would do such a dastardly!--As
if I didn't clear out on purpose to get away from him--to get out of the
whole mix--As if I knew that young one would be aboard that train!"

"But he was aboard. You admit that."

"Oh yes, he got aboard."

"Made a pleasant travelling companion, Auntie?"

"I don't know," said Aunt Elizabeth, shortly. "I didn't have ten words
with him. I told him he had put me in a position I should never forgive.
Then he told me I had put him in a worse. We quarrelled, and he went
into the smoker. At the Grand Central he checked my suitcase and lifted
his hat. He did ask if I were going to Mrs. Chataway's. I have never
seen him since."

"Aunt Elizabeth," I said, sadly, "I am younger than you--"

"Not so very much!" retorted Aunt Elizabeth.

"--and I must speak to you with the respect due my father's sister when
I say that the nobility of your conduct on this occasion--a nobility
which you will pardon me for suggesting that I didn't altogether count
on--is likely to prove the catastrophe of the situation."

Aunt Elizabeth stared at me with her wet, coquettish eyes. "You're
pretty hard on me, Maria," she said; "you always were."

"Hurry and dress," I suggested, soothingly; "there are two gentlemen to
see you downstairs."

Aunt El