down," he went on, and disappeared, to return
quickly with a tumbler in his hand.

With half-closed eyes, Dick continued as if the other man had never left
him.

"She's mounting guard," he said, "with the shuvver to help, over our
catch--the worst blackguard unhung."

A handsome woman of some thirty years, with masses of darkest hair
cunningly disposed, neck and shoulders beautiful beyond criticism, and
dressed in a peignoir of delicate simplicity, came to her husband with a
rush smooth as the full-sailed speed of a three-masted schooner.

Charles, with recovered dignity, followed in her wake.

"George! What is it, George?" she exclaimed, before she had even time to
get her eyes focused upon his companion.

"That," answered George, with a derisive gesture.

"Why, it's--oh, _Dick_!" she cried.

With her long, slender hands on his shoulders, she peered close and
eagerly into the battered countenance.

"Oh, Dickie dear, whatever have they been doing to its good old face?"
she demanded, with tenderness for the one, and anger for the many
mingling in her voice.

"Nothing to what they got from him, Betsy--unless I'm an ass. But he'll
tell us when that whisky's worked in his veins a bit. He's got a lady
out there, waiting. Shall I fetch her in--or you?"

Dick half rose from his chair. But Lady Elizabeth Bruffin pushed him
back into it.

"I will, of course," she said, and made for the front door so quickly
that Charles only just had it open in time.

As he told the butler before he slept that night, "It'd've done your
kind heart good, Mr. Baldwin, to see how they were eating 'im with their
eyes. His word law, you know, and do what he wanted, almost before he
could say what it was, and it might be an hour before he could tell 'em
why. And the terrible object he was--but with something strong and
compelling, one might say, underneath."

He was thinking, perhaps of the hand which had lifted him over the
threshold.

Charles had followed his mistress to the taxi.

The driver, turning on her approach, stood back, touching his cap;
amazed by this condescension of jewels and silk to beauty ill-clothed,
draggled, dirty and exhausted.

Suddenly Lady Elizabeth remembered that she did not know even the girl's
name.

"Open the door, please," she said to the driver. And then, to Amaryllis,
"My dear, you're to come in," and stretched her hands out with a motion
so inviting that the girl laid her own in them, taking al