to call and for you to
come, that's all we want. What frightens you?"

"Nothing," she said, and smiled. "I only feared there wasn't time."

The lover faced his cousin so abruptly that all started and laughed,
while Anna turned to her kindred, as red as a rose. "Adolphe," cried he,
"I'm going for my marriage license. While I'm getting it, will you--?"

Irby went redder than Anna. "You can't get it at this hour!" he said.
His eyes sought Flora, but she was hurriedly conferring with her
grandmother.

Hilary laughed: "You'll see. I fixed all that a week ago. Will you get
the minister?"

"Why, Hilary, this is--"

"Yass!" piped Madame, "he'll obtain him!"

The plaudits of the dancers, who once more had stopped, were loud.
Flora's glance went over to Irby, and he said, "Why, yes, Hilary, if
you--why, of course I will." There was more applause.

"Steve," said Hilary, "some one must go with me to the clerk's office
to--"

"To vouch you!" broke in the aide-de-camp. "That will be Steve
Mandeville!" Constance sublimely approved. As the three Callenders moved
to leave the room one way and the three captains another, Anna seized
the hands of Flora and her grandmother.

"You'll keep the dance going?" she solicited, and they said they would.
Flora gave her a glowing embrace, and as Irby strode by murmured to him.

"Put your watch back half an hour."

In such disordered days social liberty was large. When the detective,
after the Callenders were gone up-stairs and the captains had galloped
away, truthfully told Miss Valcour that his only object in tarrying here
was to see the love-knot tied, she heard him affably, though inwardly
in flames of yearning to see him depart. She burned to see him go
because she believed him, and also because there in the show-case still
lay the loosely heaped counterfeit of the booty whose reality she had
already ignorantly taken and stowed away.

What should she do? Here was grandma, better aid than forty Irbys; but
with both phases of her problem to deal with at once--how to trip
headlong this wild matrimonial leap and how to seize this treasure by
whose means she might leave Anna in a fallen city and follow Hilary to
the war--she was at the end of her daintiest wits. She talked on with
the gray man, for that kept him from the show-case. In an air full of
harmonies and prattle, of fluttering draperies, gliding feet, undulating
shoulders, twinkling lights, gallantry, fans, and perfume, she d