n a paper
tub, as I sat down," he remembered. "You're a little miracle of healing
to me, Alice. When I came in here I didn't know _what_ we were up
against, as a family. Your mother wished the girl pensioned----"

"Oh, Chris, not really?"

"I give you my word!" But he was enough his usual self to have taken his
seat at the piano, now, and was looking at her across it, while his
fingers fitted themselves lazily to chords and harmonics.

"I'll tell you something, if you'll promise to stop playing the instant
your supper comes up!"

"I'll promise!"

"Well, then--the new Puccini is there!" She nodded toward the
music-shelves, and he turned to the new score with an eager exclamation.
Fifteen minutes later she had to scold him to bring him to the fire
again, and to the smoking little supper. While Alice sipped ginger ale,
Christopher fell upon his meal, and they discussed the probable
presentation of the opera, and its quality.

But an hour later, when she was in bed, and Christopher was going back
to the piano for another half-hour of music, she caught his hand.

"Chris, you're not worried about this Sheridan matter?"

"Worried? No, dearest child, what is there to worry about? It isn't
blackmail, apparently it's nothing but an overdose of imagination on
your mother's part. If the girl really was promised something, or
has--for example!--old stock, or if her father was an employee who did
this or that or the other--Mrs. Sheridan's husband was employed by your
father at the time of his death, by the way--why, it's easy enough to
pay the claim, whatever it is! The girl seems to have made a nice
impression--your mother tells me she's sold me books, but that doesn't
mean much, I buy books everywhere! No, I don't think you'll ever hear of
her again. But your mother will be here in a day or two; see what you
can make of it all!"

"Oh, of course, it's nothing _wrong_!" Alice said, confidently.

And Christopher returned to his beloved piano, relieved in mind by his
wife's counsel, refreshed in body by the impromptu supper, and ready for
the music that soothed in him all the restless and unsatisfied fibres of
his soul.

CHAPTER IV

Annie, who signed herself "Anne Melrose von Behrens," was the real
dictator in the various circles of the allied families, and had a
fashion of finding herself supreme in larger circles, as well. Annie was
thirty-seven or eight, tall, thin, ash-blonde, superb in manner and
bearing. N