sed her arm through
his. She replaced the vase very carefully, looked once more around the
room, and led him to the door.

"Never mind," she said. "It isn't anything serious, of course, but it's
wonderful, Philip, what memories a really lonely woman will live on, what
she will do to keep that little natural vein of sentiment alive in her,
and how fiercely she will fight to conceal it. You can go on down and
wait for me in the hall. I am going in to say good-by to Miss Martha
Grimes. I think that this time I shall get on better with her."

CHAPTER V

Philip waited nearly a quarter of an hour for Elizabeth. When at last she
returned, she was unusually silent. They drove off together in her
automobile. She held his fingers under the rug.

"Philip dear," she said, "I think it is time that you and I were
married."

He turned and looked at her in amazement. There was a smile upon her
lips, but rather a plaintive one. He had a fancy, somehow, that there had
been tears in her eyes lately.

"Elizabeth!"

"If we are ever going to be," she went on softly, "why shouldn't we be
married quietly, as people are sometimes, and then tell every one
afterwards?"

He held the joy away from him, struggling hard for composure.

"But a little time ago," he reminded her, "you wanted to wait."

"Yes," she confessed, "I, too, had my--my what shall I call it--fear?--my
ghost in the background?"

"Ah! but not like mine," he faltered, his voice unsteady with a surging
flood of passion. "Elizabeth, if you really mean it, if you are going to
take the risk of finding yourself the wife of the villain in a _cause
celebre_, why--why--you know very well that even the thought of it can
draw me up into heaven. But, dear--my sweetheart--remember! We've played
a bold game, or rather I have with your encouragement, but we're not safe
yet."

"Do you know anything that I don't?" she asked feverishly.

"Well, I suppose I do," he admitted. "It isn't necessarily serious," he
went on quickly, as he saw the colour fade from her cheeks, "but on the
very night that our play was produced, whilst I was waiting about for you
all at the restaurant, a man came to see me. He is one of the keenest
detectives in New York--Edward Dane his name is. He knew perfectly well
that I was the man who had disappeared from the Waldorf. He told me so to
my face."

"Then why didn't he--why didn't he do something?"

"Because he was clever enough to suspect that there