“Is Mrs. Wilson here?” she inquired of the maid who answered the bell.

“Come this way, please,” said the maid, and Bab followed her across the square hall and through a door hung with heavy portieres.  She found herself in what appeared to be half library, half living room, and seemed especially designed for comfort.  A bright fire burned in the open fire place at one side of the room, and before the fire stood a young man, who turned abruptly as Bab entered.

“How do you do, Miss Thurston,” said Peter Dillon, coming forward and taking her hand.

“Why—­I thought—­” stammered Barbara, a look of keen disappointment leaping into her brown eyes, “that Mrs. Wilson—­was—­”

“To be here,” finished Peter Dillon, smiling almost tantalizingly at her evident embarrassment.  “So she was, but she received a telephone message half an hour ago and was obliged to go out for a little while.  I happened to be here when the message came and she told me that she expected you to call at half past four o’clock and asked me if I would wait and receive you.  She left a note for you in my care.  Here it is.”

Peter Dillon handed Bab an envelope addressed to “Miss Barbara Thurston,” looking at her searchingly as he did so.  Bab colored hotly under his almost impertinent scrutiny as she reached out her hand for the envelope.  She had an uncomfortable feeling at that moment that perhaps Peter Dillon knew as much about the contents of the envelope as she did.

“Thank you, Mr. Dillon,” she said in a low voice.  “I think I won’t wait for Mrs. Wilson.  Please tell her that I thank her and that I’ll write.”

“Very well,” replied the young man.  “I will deliver your message.”  He held the heavy portieres back for Bab as she stepped into the hall and accompanied her to the vestibule door.  “Good-bye, Miss Thurston,” he said with a peculiar, meaning flash of his blue eyes that completed Bab’s discomfiture.  “I shall hope to see you in a day or two.”

Bab hurried down the steps and into the street.  The shadows were beginning to fall and in another hour it would be dark.  When she reached the corner she looked about her in bewilderment, then with a little impatient exclamation she wheeled and retraced her steps.  She had been going in the wrong direction.  She had passed Mrs. Wilson’s house, when a murmur of familiar voices caused her to start and look back at it in amazement.  Stepping off the walk and behind the trunk of a great tree, Barbara stared from her place of concealment, hardly able to believe the evidence of her own eyes.  Peter Dillon was standing just outside the vestibule door, his hat in his hand and just inside stood Mrs. Wilson.  The two were deep in conversation and Bab heard the young man’s musical laugh ring out as though something had greatly amused him.  Filled with a sickening apprehension that she was the cause of his laughter, Bab stepped from behind the tree unobserved by the two on the step