arly a leisurely defiant air as she could. The last time
she had been with Danglar--as Gypsy Nan--she had, in self-protection,
forbidding intimacy, played up what he called her "grouch" at his
neglect of her.

She paused in the doorway. Halfway across the room, at the table,
Danglar's gaunt, swarthy face showed under the rays of a shaded oil
lamp. Behind her spectacles, she met his small, black ferret eyes
steadily.

"Hello, Bertha!" he called out cheerily. "How's the old girl to-night?"
He rose from his seat to come toward her. "And how's the cold?"

Rhoda Gray scowled at him.

"Worse!" she said curtly-and hoarsely. "And a lot you care! I could have
died in that hole, for all you knew!" She pushed him irritably away, as
he came near her. "Yes, that's what I said! And you needn't start any
cooing game now! Get down to cases!" She jerked her hand toward the
twisted figure that had slouched into a chair beside the table. "He says
you've got it doped out to pull something that will let me out of this
Gypsy Nan stunt. Another bubble, I suppose!" She shrugged her
shoulders, glanced around her, and, locating a chair--not too near the
table--seated herself indifferently. "I'm getting sick of bubbles!" she
announced insolently. "What's this one?"

He stood there for a moment biting at his lips, hesitant between anger
and tolerant amusement; and then, the latter evidently gaining the
ascendency, he too shrugged his shoulders, and with a laugh returned to
his chair.

"You're a rare one, Bertha!" he said coolly. "I thought you'd be wild
with delight. I guess you're sick, all right--because usually you're
pretty sensible. I've tried to tell you that it wasn't my fault I
couldn't go near you, and that I had to keep away from--"

"What's the use of going over all that again?" she interrupted tartly.
"I guess I--"

"Oh, all right!" said Danglar hurriedly. "Don't start a row! After
to-night I've an idea you'll be sweet enough to your husband, and I'm
willing to wait. Matty maybe hasn't told you the whole of it."

Matty! So that was the deformed creature's name. She glanced at him. He
was grinning broadly. A family squabble seemed to afford him amusement.
Her eyes shifted and made a circuit of the room. It was poverty-stricken
in appearance, bare-floored, with the scantiest and cheapest of
furnishings, its one window tightly shuttered.

"Maybe not," she said carelessly.

"Well, then, listen, Bertha!" Danglar's voice was lo