maid.

"I am tired of you, Lea," cried madame. "You let people bring notes into
my room, and you say you were only out of it a minute. Be good enough
to leave me for the night. I can look after myself, for once!"

The maid protested, wept, but was expelled, and a key turned between
them; then Hilda Bouverie read her note again:--

"Escaped this afternoon. Came to your concert. Hiding in
boudoir. Give me five minutes, or raise alarm, which you
please.--STINGAREE."

So ran his words in pencil on her own paper, and they were true; she had
heard at supper of the escape. Once more she looked in the glass. And to
her own eyes in these minutes she looked years younger--there was a new
sensation left in life!

A touch to her hair, a glance in the pier-glass, and all for a notorious
convict broken prison! So into the boudoir with her grandest air; but
again she locked the door behind her, and, sweeping round, beheld a bald
man bowing to her in immaculate evening clothes.

"Are you the writer of a note found on my dressing-table?" she demanded,
every syllable off the ice.

"I am."

"Then who are you, besides being an impudent forger?"

"You name the one crime I never committed," said he. "I am Stingaree."

And they gazed into each other's eyes; but not yet were hers to be
believed.

"He only escaped this afternoon!"

"I am he."

"With a bald head?"

"Thanks to a razor."

"And in those clothes?"

"I found them where I found the razor. Look; they don't fit me as well
as they might."

And he drew nearer, flinging out an abbreviated sleeve; but she looked
all the harder in his face.

"Yes. I begin to remember your face; but it has changed."

"It has gazed on prison walls for many years."

"I heard . . . I was grieved . . . but it was bound to come."

"It may come again. I care very little, after this!"

And his dark eyes shone, his deep voice vibrated; then he glanced over a
shrugged shoulder toward the outer door, and Hilda darted as if to turn
that key too, but there was none to turn.

"It ought to happen at once," she said, "and through me."

"But it will not."

His assurance annoyed her; she preferred his homage.

"I know what you mean," she cried. "You did me a service years ago. I am
not to forget it!"

"It is not I who have kept it before your mind."

"Perhaps not; but that's why you come to me to-night."

Stingaree looked upon the spirited, spoilt beauty in her satin and
dia