deeply several times, glanced at her hair in the mirror and then, being
a thoroughly good sport, Mary even managed a small, wretched laugh.

"Back again!" she said simply. "They'd discharged Felice."

"Was there--nobody else?" Anthony asked.

"Dorothy, our little parlor maid, would have done, I suppose, but
Wilkins didn't know about her," said the girl, facing him. "It's pretty
awful, isn't it?"

Even now she had not lost her nerve! The chivalrous something in Anthony
welled up more strongly than ever; the precise, rather old-maidish
quality of his expression vanished altogether--and for the very first
time Mary almost liked him.

"It's very awful, indeed," he said quickly. "More awful than you
imagine, but--we'll try to believe that all is not lost even now. One
way or another, I'll get you out of it, Miss Mary, if I have to lie my
soul into perdition. I don't know how at the moment, but the way will
indicate itself; I decline to believe anything else! You'll have to stay
here and keep your ears wide open and take your cue from whatever I'm
saying. I hope----"

"Psst!" said Johnson Boller.

Anthony left the room with a motion that was more twitch than anything
else, and he left it none too soon. The shock, or the first of it, was
over; Robert Vining was coming back to them, not like a nice young man,
but rather like a Kansas cyclone! Three thuds in the corridor, and he
appeared before them.

Robert's countenance was gray-white; his white lips, parted a little,
seemed to be stretched over his teeth; his eyes blazed blue fire! And
behind Robert--and be it confessed that there was a certain indefinite
atmosphere of fright about her--Beatrice smiled.

"So you--_you_--you beastly scoundrel!" Robert began, his hands working
as he looked straight at Johnson Boller and ignored the very existence
of Anthony Fry. "I don't know whether a thing like you can pray, but if
you can, pray quick!"

"_Me?_" Johnson Boller gulped.

Robert laughed dreadfully.

"Don't waste your time gaping!" he said, thickly. "Pray if you want to,
because you're going to die! D'ye hear? I'm going to choke out your
nasty life as I'd choke the life out of a mad dog."

"Not my life!" Johnson Boller protested, with pale lips, as he pointed
at Anthony. "He----"

"Whatever he may have had to do with luring her here I can settle with
him afterward!" Robert cried. "My concern is with _you_; and if you want
to say anything, hurry about it. I can't