should get home early and get dressed up for
dinner."

"But Mrs. Meyerburg--"

"No, no. Right in you stay. 'Sh-h-h, just don't mention it. Enough
pleasure you give me to ride by me. Take good care your foot. Good-by,
Mrs. Fischlowitz. All the way home you should take her, James."

Once more within the gloom of her Tudor hall, Mrs. Meyerburg hurried
rearward and toward the elevator. But down the curving stairway the
small maid on stilts came, intercepting her.

"Madame!"

"Ja."

"Madame will please come. Mademoiselle Betty this afternoon ees not so
well. Three spells of fainting, madame."

"Therese!"

"Oui, not serious, madame, but what I would call hysteeria and
mademoiselle will not have doctor. Eef madame will come--"

With a great mustering of her strength Mrs. Meyerburg ran up the first
three of the marble steps, then quite as suddenly stopped, reaching out
for the balustrade. The seconds stalked past as she stood there, a fine
frown sketched on her brow, and the small maid anxious and attendant.

"Madame?"

When Mrs. Meyerburg spoke finally it was as if those seconds had been
years, sapping more than their share of life from her. "I--now I don't
go up, Therese. After a while I come, but--but not now. I want, though,
you should go right away up to Miss Becky with a message."

"Oui, madame."

"I want you should tell her for me, Therese, that--that to-morrow
New-Year's dinner with the family all here, I--I want she should invite
the Marquis Rosencrantz. That everything is all right. Right away I want
you should go and tell her, Therese!"

"Oui, madame."

Up in her bedroom and without pause Mrs. Meyerburg walked directly
to the small deal table there beside her bed and still littered with
half-curled blue-prints. These she gathered into a tight roll, snapping
a rubber band about it. She rang incisively the fourth of the row of
bells. A man-servant responded almost immediately with a light rap-a-tap
at the door. She was there and waiting.

"Kemp, I want you should away take down this roll to Goldfinger's office
in the Syndicate Building. Just say Mrs. Meyerburg says everything is
all right--to go ahead."

"Yes, madam." And he closed the door after him, holding the knob a
moment to save the click.

* * * * *

In a Tudor dining-hall, long as the banquet-room of a thane, faced in
thrice-weathered oak and designed by an architect too eminent to endure
interference--