It was seven o’clock and they were all dressed and waiting for the surprise. For some reason they had had an idea it might come walking on two legs up the street or else riding in a hansom cab, and the four young girls had stepped onto the balcony outside their window. An occasional passer-by in that quiet quarter looked up with admiration at those four bright, eager faces watching each newcomer below. Their dainty muslin frocks gleamed softly white against the pink brick walls of the old house. Miss Campbell in a beautiful blue marquisette stood just inside the window with a mysterious little smile on her face.

The young girls did not hear the light tap on the door nor notice that she had turned to open it.

“Come in,” she whispered. “I haven’t told them yet, although it was really very hard to resist their pleadings.”

A woman tiptoed into the room. She was tall and dark and very beautiful, so beautiful that Miss Campbell blinked her eyes for a moment as if she had been looking at the sun. The visitor’s arms were filled with flowers.

“I have brought you each a bouquet,” she whispered. “I remembered, Miss Campbell, that you always loved forget-me-nots, and they will just match your dress to-night. Will you wear these for me?”

Miss Campbell’s exclamation of pleasure drew the attention of the watchers on the balcony to the visitor. They peeped shyly in through the window. Here was the surprise at last! A vision in a beautiful white dress, her arms filled with violets and roses! But who was she?

“Have you really forgotten me?” she cried, putting the flowers on the table and stretching out her hands.

They waited for one brief, embarrassed moment. Then Nancy cried joyfully, “Mrs. Cortinas!”

“Not ‘Mrs.’—‘Maria,’” corrected the beautiful young woman. “Maria Ruggles Cortinas. Now, do you know?”

It was indeed Maria Cortinas, whose box of jewels Billie and Nancy had once so faithfully guarded.

Those of you who have read the first of these stories, entitled “The Motor Maids’ School Days,” will recall the adventures that befell the four young girls after they came into possession of that mysterious package. You will remember, too, Maria’s mother, the wonderful old Spanish woman, Mrs. Ruggles, who kept the sailors’ inn on the shore. Maria was not only gifted with beauty. She possessed a splendid voice and was now an opera singer of much renown in Europe. But not Billie herself could have been more modest than was this fortunate young woman.

“Maria Cortinas!” they cried, enchanted with her graciousness and beauty.

“May I not kiss you all around?” she said, proceeding to do so and leaving a bouquet in the hand of each young girl as she embraced her warmly.

“How good it is to see you again,” she said, “and how sweet to hear the voices of my own home people. Oh, but I am lonesome for West Haven sometimes, and for my old home. I never seem to remember that South America ever existed.”

“And your mother?” asked Billie.

“Dear mother can hardly wait to see you,” she answered. “I am homesick sometimes, but she is homesick always. Sometimes I try to make her go back and open her inn again and cook. You know she always loved to cook.”

It seemed very fine to the girls and Miss Campbell, too, that Maria Cortinas was not ashamed that her mother had cooked many a big dinner for West Haven picnic parties which drove down to the inn. Would they ever forget that wonderful dinner they had eaten at the old inn during the famous Hallowe’en house party at the St. Clairs’?

“But where is your mother?” asked Nancy.

“She has been laid up with rheumatism for weeks. The London climate doesn’t seem to agree with her, but she will stay here while I am singing.”

“Are you singing in London?” they cried.

“In grand opera at Covent Garden,” put in Miss Campbell solemnly.

“A grand opera singer?”

Maria Ruggles Cortinas actually blushed like a schoolgirl before their wondering faces.

“I hope you will forgive me,” she laughed.

Elinor took her hand and looked reverently into her face.

“I have always wanted to know a grand opera singer,” she said. “I always thought it would be like knowing a goddess. They seem so far above everything, so big——”

“They are certainly big, dear,” laughed Maria, kissing her.

“And are we to hear you sing to-night?” asked Mary.

“No, not to-night. Some of the others. I never sing two nights in succession. That is why I could not join in the search for you last night. I was singing, and I knew nothing about what had happened until I got home and mother told me.”

“Do you live here, too?” asked Billie.

“Yes. Mother loves this old house and I do, too. It’s so much more private and quiet than a hotel. We have been coming here for years.”

“And it was you who was singing this morning?” demanded Nancy.

“Very likely. I am always singing.”

So it turned out that Maria Ruggles Cortinas, who had sung “AÏda” before a brilliant audience the night before, was the near neighbor of the Motor Maids, and was entertaining them at dinner that very evening.

“Shall we sit down and wait here until the motor comes?” suggested Maria. “It’s not quite time yet. I told them to call at half past seven. People dine very late here.”

The girls drew their chairs in a circle about the singer and watched her as if she were a curiosity. Certainly she was not their idea of what an actress was like. She was tall and quite slender through the hips, but with a singer’s chest splendidly developed and a throat full and white like a column. Her black hair was arranged as plainly as possible in a low roll on the back of her neck. Her eyes were large and dark, her nose straight and well shaped; her mouth rather large, with a generous curve to the lips; her chin full and rounded. But it was not only her features that made Maria beautiful. There was something else, a certain graciousness and charm of manner, a lovely smile which radiated her face,—these things alone would have made almost any one beautiful. So Billie was thinking, when the motor car was announced.

Presently they found themselves rolling through the streets of London in a big touring car, in the late twilight which lingers in England long after the sun has set. They became part of a stream of carriages and motor cars filled with people in evening clothes. The whole world of London seemed to have dressed itself up for dinner. At last they drew up in front of a great hotel. A lackey opened the door of the car and they followed Maria into a splendid restaurant where all the women were dressed in dÉcolletÉ gowns and the men in evening clothes.

It was a brilliant scene to the young girls, the flowers and music and the soft-footed waiters gliding about. Miss Campbell and Maria exchanged smiling glances over their serious faces. An obsequious head waiter, who evidently knew Maria well, bowed them to a table as if they had been six royal princesses. Not one of our Motor Maids was free from a slight feeling of stage fright. But in a few moments they were eating their soup and talking as gayly and naturally as they ever had around Mrs. Ruggles’ own table in the Sailor’s Inn near West Haven.

“Are there any Lords and Ladies here, Maria?” asked Nancy.

“Lots of them,” said the singer, smiling. “The room is full of them. And there’s a Russian Prince over at that table,” she added, indicating a slender young man with a high pompadour and such brilliant black eyes that they gleamed like coals of fire as he glanced about.

All the party, even Miss Helen Campbell, craned their necks to see the Russian prince.

“Girls,” exclaimed Mary suddenly, startling them by her unusual vehemence, “look, girls, the man with the Prince! Would you ever have known him in the world in those clothes?”

Sitting at the table with the Russian was a man strangely familiar and yet unfamiliar to Miss Campbell and the Motor Maids. He was very old, quite small and dressed in the most correct evening clothes. He had a large shaggy head set on rather a small, delicate body.

“Mr. Kalisch!” they exclaimed, loud enough for Telemac himself to hear them across the room. He turned his head in their direction, recognized them instantly and hurried over to their table.

“It is good to see you again,” he exclaimed cordially, shaking hands with each one, and giving Maria a low foreign bow. “I have been lonely for my young friends since I reached London. But I am always sorry when a journey is over. It’s like reaching the end of a good book.”

“Our journey has just commenced to be over,” began Billie. “You didn’t know that we were lost, Nancy and I, and spent the night at Miss Felicia Rivers’ in the slums?”

Telemac’s face suddenly turned perfectly crimson. Then the color faded as quickly as it had come. It was only for the mere fraction of an instant, but to Billie he appeared like a man who had received a shock, when he said slowly:

“You spent the night where?”

“At Miss Felicia Rivers’ lodging house,” repeated Billie.

Then, with Nancy’s assistance, she related the history of their adventures.

“And you got safely away?” said Telemac.

“Yes,” they answered, mindful of their promise to Marie-Jeanne.

“What an experience for two young girls just arrived in London!” he exclaimed. “And you saw nothing, heard nothing while you were there?”

“Yes, we saw and heard things, too,” replied Nancy, “but nothing of importance.”

“What time was it when you escaped?” he asked.

“Oh, somewhere between four and five o’clock.”

“Did you ever hear of Miss Rivers’ Lodging House, Mr. Kalisch?” asked Billie.

“How can I tell?” he answered. “London is full of such black holes as that.”

But Billie in her heart had a conviction that Telemac knew Miss Felicia Rivers’ lodging house very well. She couldn’t explain why the thought had come to her or what difference it made if the strange man was acquainted with the wretched place; but she felt that he did not wish to appear to know it.

“How did you finally find your way back?” he asked.

“Marie——” began Nancy, and then stopped. If Marie-Jeanne had only not bound them over to secrecy! It was so difficult to tell the story and leave out the most interesting half.

“Another lodger, a girl, helped us,” said Billie.

Telemac left them, promising to call at Westminster Chambers in a few days, and presently they finished dinner and with many other diners rolled away in motor cars to the opera.

“I feel like a real society belle,” said Nancy, bridling with pride.

“I feel like a princess,” observed Elinor.

“Of course you do, Lady Clara Vere de Vere,” put in Billie.

“After we get into our box,” began Maria, “perhaps,—in the first intermission, you may,—I’m not at all certain, mind you, but you may meet a real live lord. How would you like that?”

“A lord!” they repeated.

“Yes, he is a friend of mine and he often comes into my box on nights when I go to the opera to hear other people sing.”

“Is he handsome?” demanded Nancy.

“Very, I think.”

“Does he own a palace?” asked Mary.

“No, not a palace,” answered Maria smiling. “He’s counted poor as the world goes here, I believe. But he has an old place in Ireland somewhere he’s very proud of. However, his title and his ruined castle are only a small part of him. He is really a very fine man. He has asked me to visit his place in Ireland, and I do hope he will come to the box to-night, because I have concocted a wonderful scheme; and if it turns out as I wish, it will concern all of you. But here we are at the theater.”

The four girls were not very intimate with grand opera. On one memorable occasion a company of great singers had given one performance in West Haven. “Lohengrin” was the opera, and as luck would have it, “Lohengrin” was the opera to-night. Many people smiled up at their eager faces looking down from the box, half awed, half bewildered at the brilliant audience. Miss Campbell and Maria sat in the back talking together.

It was very much like a dream:—tier after tier of private boxes were filled with parties of men and women, all very handsome and very beautifully dressed; the air hummed with conversation, like a bee-hive; from the pit, which seemed a great distance away, an occasional laugh floated up through the haze of talk; and through all sounded the noise of many instruments “tuning up.”

Suddenly a slender, nervous-looking man emerged from somewhere underneath the stage and walked over to the leader’s stand in front of the orchestra. Immediately the entire audience burst into applause. The leader bowed, seized his bÂton, the lights went down, a hush fell over the place, and the overture began.

“The leader’s bÂton has a light in it like a fairy’s wand,” exclaimed Mary, forgetting where she was.

Maria smiled and touched the young girl’s cheek lightly with one finger.

“Lots of people think it is a fairy’s wand,” she whispered.

How the music throbbed and thrilled! It went up and up in a great crescendo. Elinor shivered and closed her eyes. When she opened them again the curtain was slowly rising. As the opera proceeded she was lost to the audience, lost to her friends, to everything except the story of Elsa of Brabant.

Nancy listened to the music, but her eyes were busy, also, looking at the beautiful dresses of the ladies in the boxes adjoining.

“Last night,” Billie was thinking, “we were two beggar girls dressed in rags, and to-night we are sitting in a box at the grand opera. I can hardly believe I am not dreaming.”

As for little Mary, she had but one thought. With all her heart and soul she was waiting for Lohengrin, the Silver Knight, who would presently appear in his swan boat, far down the winding stream. At last the curtain went down. There was a movement, a stir, a burst of conversation and laughter, and she heard Maria saying:

“Lord Glenarm, let me introduce you to my young friends from home.”

The four girls turned around quickly. It almost seemed to them that Lohengrin himself must have made a rapid change from his silver armor to evening clothes and walked into their box. But on second glance, they saw that Lord Glenarm was older than the stage Lohengrin and much finer looking, too. His brown hair was slightly gray at the temples; his gray eyes had blue lights in them; he had rather a beaked nose and a fine, square chin. He was very tall, and his shoulders stooped a little. The girls could not tell why he reminded them at first of the tall blonde young Lohengrin. Perhaps it was a certain seriousness in his face and strength of purpose.

“It is a great pleasure always to meet young ladies from America,” said Lord Glenarm, shaking hands with each of the Motor Maids, as Maria spoke their names. He had been presented to Miss Campbell, of course, first of all.

“You will be especially interested in these girls, Lord Glenarm,” Maria continued, “because they are such enthusiastic motorists. This remarkable child,” she went on, indicating Billie, “runs her own car, and last summer they motored across the American continent from Chicago to the Pacific Coast. What do you think of that?”

“Is it possible!” exclaimed Lord Glenarm. “Across the prairies and the Rocky Mountains and the great desert? You see, I know your country very well. How did you do it?”

Billie blushed. She had never spoken to a real lord in her life before, but this one seemed quite natural and like other people,—only handsomer and more gracious even than most other people.

“Oh, we had lots of accidents,” she said, “but we never thought of turning back but once.”

“And why was that?” asked Lord Glenarm with much interest.

“It was because Cousin Helen got so awfully hungry in Iowa.”

The Englishman threw back his head and laughed as if he enjoyed it immensely. The others laughed, too, and the ice was broken.

“I should never have imagined this fragile, dainty little lady had an appetite,” he exclaimed, turning to Miss Campbell.

“And why not, pray?” demanded Miss Campbell. “I can’t exist on canned tomatoes and soggy bread any more than any one else.”

“We will see that you fare better in England, Miss Campbell,” he said. “You shall have squab and strawberries and Devonshire cream. Isn’t that what ladies like?”

“They like good beefsteak when they are hungry,” said Miss Campbell. “And riding in the open air all day is calculated to give one a pretty fair appetite.”

“The girls have brought their famous car with them, Lord Glenarm,” put in Maria.

“Oh, ho!” he exclaimed, “so you’re going to tour the British Isles. That’s a mere bagatelle to such seasoned motorists as you, I suppose. But when you come to Ireland, perhaps you’ll stop and visit me. I have a nice old place there.”

“Is it a castle?” demanded Mary, who yearned infinitely to see a real palace and a real castle.

“Yes, a jolly old castle.”

“And we’re to stay there?” cried Nancy in an ecstatic tone.

“If you will,” answered Lord Glenarm.

“We shall be delighted,” answered Miss Campbell.

“And Madame will come, too,” he continued, turning to Maria.

“It depends on when they go,” she answered. “I shall not be through here for several weeks.”

“We are just Gypsies,” put in Miss Campbell. “We can make the visit whenever it’s convenient to you, Maria.”

It was settled, then, that they were to visit Lord Glenarm, the time to be agreed on later.

“I have cousins in Ireland,” said Elinor proudly, just as the lights went down. The young girl had always been just a little boastful of those Irish cousins of hers. A glamor of mystery hung about them and she had pictured them in her mind as being wonderful people. She had endowed them with talents, put them in fine old homes and surrounded them with a golden haze of romance.

Then the curtain went up, and presently the great second act of the opera had begun, in which Elsa becomes the bride of Lohengrin.