en people were in love by
the frequency with which they wore their best clothes, noticed now how
wonderfully lovely Mathilde was looking; but she noticed it quite
unsuspiciously, for she was thinking, "My child is really a beauty."

"You remember Mrs. Baxter, my dear."

Mathilde did not remember her in the least, though she smiled
sufficiently. To her Mrs. Baxter seemed just one of many dressy old
ladies who drifted across the horizon only too often. If any one had told
her that her grandfather had ever been supposed to be in danger of
succumbing to charms such as these, she would have thought the notion an
ugly example of grown-up pessimism.

Mrs. Baxter held her hand and patted it.

"Where does she get that lovely golden hair?" she asked. "Not from you,
does she?"

"She gets it from her father," answered Adelaide, and her expression
added, "you dreadful old goose."

In the pause Mathilde made her escape unquestioned. She knew even before
a last pathetic glance that her mother was unutterably wearied with her
visitor. In other circumstances she would have stayed to effect a
rescue, but at present she was engaged in a deed of some recklessness on
her own account. She was going to meet Pete Wayne secretly at the
Metropolitan Museum.

CHAPTER XII

In all her life Mathilde had never felt so conspicuous as she did going
up the long flight of stairs at the Fifth Avenue entrance of the museum.
It seemed to her that people, those walking past in the sunshine on the
sidewalk, and the strangers in town seeing the sights from the top of the
green busses, were saying to one another as they looked at her, "There
goes a New York girl to meet her lover in one of the more ancient of the
Egyptian rooms."

She started as she heard the voice of the guard, though he was saying
nothing but "Check your umbrella" to a man behind her. She sped across
the marble floor of the great tapestry hall as a little, furry wild
animal darts across an open space in the woods. She was thinking that she
could not bear it if Pete were not there. How could she wait many minutes
under the eyes of the guards, who must know better than any one else that
no flesh-and-blood girl took any real interest in Egyptian antiquities?
The round, unambitious dial at the entrance, like an enlarged
kitchen-clock, had pointed to the exact hour set for the meeting. She
ought not to expect that Pete, getting away from the office in business
hours, could be a