It transpired that Miss Maria Potts had not been asleep, save possibly for a few weary winks. Howard’s inability to reach her ear was due not to her slumbers but to the fact that half a dozen other Roseborough citizens were demanding to be connected with Mrs. Mearely’s residence. For the first hour of the doctor’s absence, Mrs. Wells, muffled in an eider-down wrapper, and topped with a frilled nightcap, had sat at the telephone and called everyone whose number she could remember. There were several whom she did not call, because Peter had mislaid the book. The book in Mrs. Witherby’s home, however, was not mislaid; and, as she made Mabel and Corinne do all the packing of her small trunk and her several bandboxes, she herself had time to spend in notifying the persons Mrs. Wells omitted that Mrs. Mearely had been “taken ill and of course sent at once for me to come and oversee things.”

So it was that Mr. Howard had less than five minutes in which to bend his stern, menacing, contemptuous gaze on the interloper, who was not only a poacher in the emotional realm, but, judging by his eccentric attire, was also something of the sort by field and stream. The instrument behind him tinkled. For the next hour, indeed, it tinkled incessantly. Howard ran back and forth telling soothing fictions to first one and then another; sometimes pausing to upbraid the somnolent constable because he had not caught the gaol-bird and put leg-irons on him before ever he entered Villa Rose. Constable Marks, sleeping and waking by jerks, mumbled protests. Mrs. Mearely and her guest, discreetly seated at opposite sides of the room, were unable to exchange more than a whispered word or two. His amused cheerfulness stabbed her to the heart; because he did not know his danger. Straining her ears nervously, at times she believed she could hear groans outside—the rumblings of Woodseweedsetisky’s secret service, Teodor Carl Peter Lassanavatiewicz, shot in the leg by Roseborough’s human watchdog, Constable Alfred Marks.

Another tinkle drew Howard from his chaperoning station, just within the doorway. He always left the door open when the bell called him upon these excursions. The guilty pair could see the back of his head—and be reminded that he had two ears, and that only one of them was required for the receiver.

The prince leaned as far out of his chair as he could, without falling out, and whispered across the room: “Where does he come in? And why doesn’t he like me?”

“Ssh—!” She held on to the arm of her chair and stretched out her neck and alarmed countenance, for all the world as though she expected to be guillotined. “He’s a relative—of Mr. Mearely’s, and—and—” she stopped, and gestured for silence, thinking that what he overheard of Howard’s conversation might enlighten him.

“No, thank you.” Howard was repeating what had become a formula; his tones were still unfailingly polite, but weary and suggestive of nerves straining thin under the surface. “Mrs. Mearely is not ill. Just a fright. Mrs. Witherby is most kind and considerate, but it was really unnecessary to call you up about it. No. Thank you.” He came to the door and addressed Mrs. Mearely, coldly, “That was Mrs. Field. She says she has been trying for half an hour to get this line. Between them, I don’t think Mrs. Wells and Mrs. Witherby have overlooked anybody.”

Ting-a-ling-a-ling! With a barely suppressed sigh Mr. Howard went back to the instrument; absent-mindedly, he closed the door. This time it was Central herself who desired speech with him.

“Land to goodness! Mr. Howard, I’m tuckered out!” she complained, bitterly. “What in creation’s happened up to Villa Rose, anyhow? Never, in all my days in this office, have I heard subscribers ramp round like they been doin’ this night. I ain’t had a wink of sleep; and maw’s jest come and stuck a Dollop’s stickem headache plaster on to the back of my neck. I declare I’m weak as a plucked chicken. I give all Roseborough fair warning, right now, that I ain’t a-goin’ to stand much more of it. Here, hold on. Don’t ring off. There’s your party.” Anon, Howard was answering the same questions in the same wearily courteous manner.

Seeing that the door was closed Rosamond glanced at Marks and knew, by his rhythmic snores, that he was resting peacefully. She whispered:

“There is just one chance....”

“I wish you’d tell me what has happened. Why are all these people here? Why are you so distressed?”

“Mrs. Wells telephoned everybody that I had been taken ill. Then when Mr. Howard came—and found you—and the constable—goodness knows what they think. They want to have you arrested as a housebreaker.”

“How charming! This is an adventure.” He looked at her, keenly. “Are they gossiping? Ah—I see. Then the best thing, I suppose, is to give up this fun, and tell them who I am.”

Forgetting caution in the thrill of his words, she exclaimed aloud:

“Oh Prince! You would make that sacrifice for me!” His eyes twinkled with amusement. “Yes, dear Madam Make-Believe. ’Tis no sacrifice. Their tongues can’t hurt me.”

She shook her head. Not at any price would she sell his dear liberty.

“You can’t. It is too dangerous. If you were to confess who you are—now—here—with that awful man in the garden....”

He looked as crestfallen as a boy whose long-planned trick deceives no one.

“You know who I am then? You only pretended you didn’t?”

“I didn’t know, at first. I thought you were just the—the tramp—the vagabond you said you were, till that awful man in the garden came and told me your real name.”

“An awful man in the garden told you my real name?” he asked, puzzled. He, too, forgot caution and the whisper. He rose and crossed the room to her, unaware that his moving shadow had flickered upon the screen of Constable Marks’s dream.

“Yes; a foreign, guttural, blackish man. He speaks all sorts of languages. He says his name is Lass—Lass—ass—an—a—wiz.”

“Lassanavatiewicz?” he exclaimed, in great astonishment.

“Yes. He has come for you.”

“Oh! but that’s ridiculous!” he asserted, indignantly. “I’ve committed no crime. He has no right to follow me here. Of all...!”

She interrupted him, thinking altogether of the gravity of his situation and the need of haste.

“You must get away secretly, if you can, before the light comes—without his seeing you. I can give some explanation—temporarily. And when the truth comes out, you will be safely out of that man’s reach, and everything will be all right for me. Then they will all look foolish, and it will serve them right.”

She led him, both tiptoeing, in front of Constable Marks toward the music room.

“You will find a little alcove window at the end of the music room. Raise it very softly and....”

“I have no faith in either your doors or your windows as a means of escape. But I will make the third and last attempt.” He whispered this in her ear, with a return of his natural and whimsical manner. They reached the door and opened it with a faint click, since their hands met on the handle. They did not see the Law unveiling its eyes.

“Will it make it better for you if I get away now?” he asked.

“Yes, yes! do it for my sake!”

“Then I’ll go.” He bent toward her.

“Good-bye, Prince Run-Away.” she said, and added wistfully, “Oh, will you ever come again?”

He kissed her. “This afternoon,” he answered; and slipped into the music room quickly, lest she should rebuke him.

“’Alt! ’alt!” Mr. Alfred Marks, it appeared could move suddenly when duty called. He went after the vagabond at a heavy jog-trot, waving his weapon in circles that threatened not only his prisoner, but the lady of the villa and the antiques as well, not to mention portions of Mr. Marks’s own anatomy.

“Anything to oblige,” the prince said, politely.

“W’ere’s the lights in ’ere? If they ain’t on in a jiff, Hi shoots, and there’s no tellin’ wot Hi’ll ’it—maybe nuthin’!”

Rosamond ran to the switch and turned it. Her vagabond was sitting on the window-sill, laughing.

“I suppose there was a pass-word once, to get out of this house?”

“Oh! how can you joke?” She burst into tears.

“That’s wot Hi say,” the constable concurred. “Wot’s frisky habout it? A blamed botheration is wot you are; and Hi’ve ’arf a mind to tell you so; ’arf a mind and mebbe a bit more! Come horf o’ that there winder-sill and sit hon the piany-stool. Come horf, now. Hi’ll sit right ’ere. Hit’ll be heasier to hoversee yer ’ere. Ma’am, shut the door. Not honly for syfety’s syke—’im bein’ such a slipp’ry customer—but the hearly mornin’ hair is bad for a sensitive man like wot Hi am hin a draught.”

“Rosamond!” She heard Howard’s voice, with a sharpness of authority in it that made her wince. As she returned to the living room, she was mutely imploring that some means might be put into her hands for the adequate and sufficient punishment of this man. She sank down upon the settee and turned her profile to him.

“I grieve to see you in distress,” he began very formally. The telephone tinkled. “Ringing off—can’t be another connection so soon,” he muttered. “For your own sake you must corroborate the story I shall tell.” The bell rang again, a longer tinkle. He frowned, but continued. “I have been thinking that it may be best”—the bell was ringing loudly now, Miss Potts losing her patience at the delay—“it may be best to tell Mrs. Witherby....” He surrendered and went to answer the call.

Rosamond heard wheels coming up the gravel road but she did not move. All hope of the prince’s escape was lost now, and with it all fear for herself. She sat still and limp, humped upon the settee, a symbolic figure of Dejection. Howard, having disposed of the last kind inquirer with less polite circumlocution than usual, re-entered.

“I want to make you understand, my dear Cousin....” (Miss Maria Potts inserted the plug again. He scowled, glanced toward the telephone then endeavoured to continue, regardless of the thin but insistent tinkle), “er—that you can rely on me, to any extent. I am in no haste personally to put the worst construction on this event.”

“Oh, really? No?” she hissed at him.

He hesitated, slightly flustered by her accents of scorn and the angry flashing of her eyes. He had thought of her as submissive and ashamed, and prepared to show a proper gratitude to those who were rescuing her from the consequence of her folly. The bell no longer tinkled. It pealed—in long and short rhythm, loudly, without punctuation or pause. Howard dashed at the telephone and began a counter ringing to get Central’s ear.

“Central. This is Villa Rose. Mr. Howard speaking. This incessant ringing is becoming a nuisance. I must request you not to ring this number again to-night, no matter who asks for it.”

“Oh is that so?” Miss Potts snapped back at him. “I guess I’m to sit here forever wrapped round in gran’maw’s crazy quilt off my bed, which was the first thing handy when I had to grab somethin’ to run in here when that ringing first started to get the doctor. My! land! Nobody into our rooms has had a wink of sleep—maw, nor Susannah nor the dawg neither—he’s been growling somethin’ fierce. I’m going to switch every last one of them crazy subscribers on to your line, when they asks for it. If you think Maria Potts is the only person that’s going to be rung up and pestered you’re badly mistook. ’Twas Villa Rose’s line that started the ructions that’s got all Roseborough on the jig, and I figger on keepin’ you jest as busy as subscribers keeps me. At that, you’re fixed a lot more comfortable than I be. I’ll bet you’ve got more on to you than a crazy quilt.”

“Very well, Central,” harshly. “In that case, I shall leave the receiver off the hook.”

“You’re no gent’man!” she screamed at him.

Howard fulfilled his threat, notwithstanding, and returned to the downcast but disdainful lady on the settee.

“I was about to say that we must offer Mrs. Witherby a convincing explanation—thoroughly convincing. Therefore, I say, rely on me wholly and corroborate what I say.”

She gave him a long, cool glance and asked contemptuously:

“What of another woman’s reputation—which it is you who have injured? Why not protect her?”

This unexpected counter-stroke took him aback completely.

“I—er—I fail to apprehend your meaning,” he stammered.

“Oh, people are always ready to sneer at a girl, when a man’s attentions don’t come to marriage.”

He felt the red deepening in his face and said—the more awkwardly because he was trying to appear serene and dominant:

“You said nothing of this to me before.”

“No,” she answered, reflectively. “Then I could have sneered with the rest. I was getting to be like them.”

Feeling more at ease immediately, because she had abandoned the subject of Miss Crewe to speak of herself, he attempted a return to his former manner.

“The events of this evening have unstrung you.”

She leaped to her feet as if she were about to attack him.

“Unstrung!” she cried. “They’ve opened my eyes, and the thing I see most clearly is that I am nothing. Yes, nothing. A few hours ago I was a much-flattered hostess, the courted mistress of this house, the woman whose word was law in the fashions and entertainments of this community....”

“Dear Rosamond, that is your position in Roseborough.”

“Not any longer....”

Whatever she intended to say was forgotten for the moment in the emotions that surged upon her at the spectacle of Thomas Hogworthy, Mrs. Witherby’s man-of-all-jobs, with his employer’s trunk on his shoulders. It was a small yellow-panelled, tin-plated trunk, with a rounded lid, and well corded with Hannah Ann’s clothesline. He waited on the threshold.

“Good-evening, Thomas. Er—let me see....” Howard debated whether to send the trunk immediately to one of the guest rooms, then he thought it would please Mrs. Witherby better to select her own chamber. “You had better put the trunk in the dining room just now. That way.”

Thomas, a silent man, merely nodded and, setting the trunk on the floor, dragged and bumped it over polished wood and rare rugs and into the dining room. Then, with a curt nod, he silently departed.

Rosamond’s cheeks flamed again with indignation.

“You see! This is no longer my house. I am not mistress here. You have taken authority over my life. Against my orders, you command the arrest of a man you believe I love; Mrs. Witherby sends her trunk into my house, without asking my leave, and comes here herself to stay as long as it pleases her—and you tell her old Thomas where the trunk is to go!” Her anger grew with the enumeration of her wrongs. “And why are you so anxious to save me—all of you? For my sake? Oh no! Not at all. Because of all this—the money and the position. If it were Mabel Crewe who had given food to a man during the hours and under the conditions which society deems improper, would some Mrs. Busybody’s trunk be dragged across her floors—or would you be offering all your fine talents of invention for her protection?”

She had made him wince again, and he was angry; but, by an effort, he controlled himself.

“I have not denied that your position makes it more imperative....”

Her rage rose hysterically.

“Yes! The position! The woman is nothing. The woman is just a human being, and doesn’t count. I’m the—the—axle in Roseborough’s wheel. So you’ll keep me in my position for your own benefit. The moment I do something which is outside your rules, you seize on my house and my life and—and—force me to save my good name—for you—for you!” pointing an accusing forefinger at him. “But you’ll regret it! Send him to prison and see what comes of it! It’s wicked—wicked. He was so happy and free. And—and....” Hot tears, the result of strained nerves and gusts of fury, gushed from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She sobbed, “You’ll look per—perfect f-fools!”

Mrs. Witherby now came into view. She was scarcely discernible among leaning towers of band-boxes, and carried a black handbag of the size and shape of a young gondola. Leaning over the verandah railing she admonished the silent Mr. Hogworthy.

“Drive home quickly, Thomas. Miss Corinne and Miss Mabel are alone. And do not forget a single one of my instructions.”

“Mrs. Witherby,” Howard warned.

Mrs. Mearely was past caution.

“She is your guest, not mine!” She tossed her head, and started for the music room. Alarmed and now thoroughly angry also, at what he considered her stupid and wilful disregard of a delicate situation, he strode forward to intercept her.

“Control yourself,” he ordered her, severely. “Control yourself. You can’t afford to ignore Mrs. Witherby. I certainly would not advise you to go in there for a tÊte-À-tÊte at this stage of the proceedings.”

This latest caution was the last straw.

“I don’t care!” she cried, with rising shrillness. “You—you—have wicked thoughts. You’re horrid, horrid people!” She rushed out, and slammed the door so vigorously that the antiquities of a thousand years rattled.

“Well!” Mrs. Witherby said, when she could get her breath. “Well! and what have you to say to that, Mr. Howard?”

“Er—my cousin is not quite herself—hysterical—er....” He lapsed into silence. No one ever maintained an argument against Mrs. Witherby’s sniffs.

“You may call it hysteria. I call it ingratitude—and bad manners. But, really! why should one expect Rosamond Cort, of Poplars Vale, to have innate manners? (She emphasized “innate” with an inflection all her own.) Where was she to learn them? From her mother—at the butter-tubs?”

“Oh no, Mrs. Witherby, I assure you Rosamond is most grateful—in fact, I might say, almost too grateful. You mistake.”

She put an end to his tremulous mumblings, sharply.

“Instead of contradicting me, I’d be obliged if you’d relieve me of my bundles. I’ve carried them all the way up the hill. No one came to meet me or assist me in any way.”

Bowing nervously, Howard seized, from her collection, one bandbox—the largest—and the handbag.

“I apologize a thousand times. My cousin was giving me a description of—er—the events that occurred here to-night. And....”

“Kindly be careful with that bandbox,” she snapped.

He bowed again, smiling foolishly.

“I beg your pardon. I believe you will find that I have not injured it.” He handed it back to her.

“I don’t want it! The string has cut my fingers. I carried it all the way up the hill. Set it down.”

“I beg your—set it down, I believe you said?” He put the bandbox on the floor, directly between them, in the middle of the room. “As I was about to relate, my cousin has....”

“Not there—to be stepped on! Set it under the table.”

“Oh, to be sure! Yes. How odd I didn’t think of the table! My cousin....”

“Give me my bag again. I need it.”

“To be sure!” He bowed and handed her the desired object. She pulled it open, took out a handkerchief, dabbed at her nose, put the handkerchief back and handed the bag again to Howard, who was receiving and surrendering her property mechanically now.

“My cousin has revealed....”

She saw his embarrassment and his anxiety to conciliate her and she scorned them.

“Well, I hope she has invented some sort of a story that people can believe. That’s all I ask of her. As the mother of Corinne, I think I have the right to ask that.”

He dropped her bag on the bandbox and began eagerly.

“Indeed you have, my dear, kind lady. And you’ll be glad to hear that the true story removes all the—the—doubtful appearances.”

“Don’t put my bag there! Put it on the table.”

He obeyed hastily. “I beg your pardon. As I was saying, the true story, removes....”

She interrupted him impatiently.

“I heard you! Of course I knew your intelligence would be equal to the occasion. I suppose you’ve got the man out of the way?”

She had removed her wrap and bonnet, and was moving about the room fussily, with little touches at this and little dabs at that, indicating unmistakably that at last a mistress of quality and authority had come to Villa Rose. She turned the Buddha about from one position to another, and finally transferred him to the stand by the settee; she pulled a piece of Sweet William out of the vase of old-fashioned garden flowers, standing there, and draped it over the image’s shoulder. She carried an antique copper vase from the mantel to the bookcase, and was obliged to make room for it there by scattering a group of small objects. She managed to crowd them all about the vase, with the exception of a foxhound in green bronze. She finally deposited this animal at the feet of the Buddha.

“I’ll have a smart talk with those two lazy maids to-morrow, and find out why they both left the same day as the coachman. I’m more than ever convinced now, that there’s something queer about that. Of course it would be a dreadful shame to wake Mrs. Lee, yet, if she had a telephone I really would have called her. She should know about this. Oh, I knew all along that that gaudy frock had not been put on for my benefit!” She turned abruptly. “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve done with the man?”

Howard, who had several times attempted to speak, and had also been following her spasmodic dashes about the room as best he could, caught up with her now and, making much of the chance to create a sensation, said, with slow impressiveness.

“The man is under arrest.”

“Under arrest!” An ivory warrior, of the Dynasty of Bing, jumped out of her slackening hand and rolled under the bookcase unheeded. “Under arrest! Good gracious. You must tell me all about it at once. Come into the dining room. I must make myself a pot of tea or I shall be faint. Come at once and tell me.”

“Certainly. You must be in possession of all the facts,” he said, soothingly.

Dawn was sending opalescent flushes across the horizon and the bird life in the gardens of Roseborough was waking with musical murmurs. Rosamond entered the living room and walked about, dejectedly, turning off the lights. A white mist lay over the river. The air was damp and sweet.