nly Beatrice was accomplishing a very dramatic pause, and in it
her lips drew back and showed her beautiful teeth.

"The young lady is a friend of yours, too?" she asked very sweetly.

"Friend!" cried Robert cried. "She's the girl I'm going to marry! Where
is she, madam? Can't you tell me what has happened?"

Beatrice's laugh was blood-curdling.

"Mrs. Boller!" Anthony cried. "I protest----"

"Do you really?" Beatrice smiled and turned directly to Robert. "So
you're going to marry her?"

"What? Yes."

"Or perhaps you're not!" Mrs. Boller mused, "You think her a very worthy
young woman?"

Robert looked blankly at her.

"But she is not," Beatrice said softly. "And you look like a decent
sort, and however much it may hurt for a little, you shall have the
truth. You asked me where I found this hat. Well, it was in the bedroom
at the end of that corridor--Mr. Boller's room!"

She waited vainly for a little, because Robert simply did not
comprehend. He frowned at Beatrice and then shook his head.

"What--what do you say?"

"It had been there all night, Mr. Vining," Beatrice purred on. "So had
she!"

"Mary--_my Mary_? Mary Dalton?" Robert gasped.

"Mary Dalton!"

"But that--that's all damned--pardon me!--nonsense! That----"

He turned on Anthony; and then, quickly as he had turned, he gasped and
stared with burning eyes.

View him as one chose, there was nothing about Anthony to indicate that
it was nonsense. He was biting his lips; his eyes were upon the floor;
had he rehearsed the thing for months he could not possibly have looked
more guilty.

"Why--why----" choked Robert Vining.

Beatrice laid a slender hand on his arm.

"Come with me," she said quickly. "Come and see her bag and her little
toilet case and several other of her things. Perhaps you'll recognize
them, too, and they'll convince you that she really settled down here
for a visit. Come!"

As a man in a dreadful dream, Robert Vining followed her blindly into
the corridor and out of sight. Johnson Boller smiled a demon smile and
thrust his hands into his trouser-pockets.

"Here's where _he_ gets _his_!" he stated. Anthony could no more than
speak.

"That--that woman!" he contrived. "What an absolutely merciless
thing----"

"Huh? Bee?" the remarkable Boller said sharply. "She's all right; she's
acting according to her own lights, isn't she? Why the devil shouldn't
Vining suffer, too? D'ye think I'm the only man in the world that has