!
Really, Mr. Bransford, I feel that I should take you back to your
chaperon at once. You might be compromised, you know!"

Goaded to desperation, he acted on this hint at once. He turned, with
stiff and stilted speech:

"I will take you back to the window, Miss Hoffman. Then there is nothing
for me to do but go. I am sorry to have caused you even a moment's
annoyance. To-morrow you will see how you have twisted--I mean, how
completely you have misinterpreted everything I have said. Perhaps some
day you may forgive me. Here is the window. Good-night--good-by!"

Miss Hoffman lingered, however.

"Of course, if you apologize----"

"I do, Miss Hoffman. I beg your pardon most sincerely for anything I
have ever said or done that could hurt you in any way."

"If you are sure you are sorry--if you take it all back and will never
do such a thing again--perhaps I may forgive you."

"I won't--I am--I will!" said the abject and groveling wretch. Which
was incoherent but pleasing. "I didn't mean anything the way you took
it; but I'm sorry for everything."

"Then I didn't beguile you to come? Or mask as a Friend in the hope that
you would identify me?"

"No, no!"

Miss Ellinor pressed her advantage cruelly. "Nor take stock of each new
masker to see if he possibly wasn't the expected Mr. Bransford? Nor drag
you into the garden? Nor squeeze your arm?" Her hands went to her face,
her lissome body shook. "Oh, Mr. Bransford!" she sobbed between her
fingers. "How could you--how _could_ you say that?"

The clock chimed. A pealing voice beat out into the night: "Masks off!"
A hundred voices swelled the cry; it was drowned in waves of laughter.
It rose again tumultuously: "_Masks off! Masks off!_" Nearer came
hateful voices, too, that cried: "_Ellinor! Ellinor! Where are you?_"

"I must go!" said Jeff. "They'll be looking for you. No; you didn't do
any of those things. You couldn't do any of those things. Good-by!"

"_Ellinor! Ellinor Hoffman!! Where are you?_"

Miss Hoffman whipped off her mask. From the open window a shaft of light
fell on her face. It was flushed, sparkling, radiant. "Masks off!" she
said. "Stupid!... Oh, you great goose! Of course I did!" She stepped
back into the shadow.

No one, as the copybook says justly, may be always wise. Conversely, the
most unwise of us blunders sometimes upon the right thing to do. With a
glimmer of returning intelligence Mr. Bransford laid his noseguard on
the window-sill.