“If I were his highness,” said Miss Cobb, spreading the Irish lace collar she was making over her knee and squinting at it, “I should wish my fiancee to be more er—­dignified.  Those old Austrian families are very haughty.  They would not understand our American habit of osculation.”

I was pretty mad at that, for anybody could have seen Miss Patty didn’t kiss him.

“If by osculation you mean kissing, Miss Cobb,” I said, going over to her, “I guess you don’t remember the Austrian count who was a head waiter here.  If there was anything in the way of osculation that that member of an old Austrian family didn’t know, I’ve got to find it out.  He could kiss all around any American I ever saw!”

I went back to my news stand.  I was shaking so my knees would hardly hold me.  All I could think of was that they had swallowed Mr. Pierce, bait and hook, and that for a time we were saved, although in the electric light Mr. Pierce was a good bit less like Dicky Carter than he had seemed to be in the spring-house by the fire.

Well, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Everybody went to bed early.  Mr. Thoburn came over and bought a cigar on his way up-stairs, and he was as gloomy as he had been cheerful before.

“Well,” I said, “I guess you won’t put a dancing floor in the dining-room just yet, Mr. Thoburn.”

“I’m not in a hurry,” he snapped.  “It’s only January, and I don’t want the place until May.  I’ll get it when I’m ready for it.  I had a good look at young Carter, and he’s got too square a jaw to run a successful neurasthenics’ home.”

I went to the pantry myself at ten o’clock and fixed a tray of supper for Mr. Pierce.  He would need all his strength the next day, and a man can’t travel far on buttered pop-corn.  I found some chicken and got a bottle of the old doctor’s wine—­I had kept the key of his wine-cellar since he died—­and carried the tray up to Mr. Pierce’s sitting-room.  He had the old doctor’s suite.

The door was open an inch or so, and as I was about to knock I heard a girl’s voice.  It was Miss Patty!

“How can you deny it?” she was saying angrily.  “I dare say you will even deny that you ever saw this letter before!”

There was a minute’s pause while I suppose he looked at the letter.

“I never did!” he said solemnly.

There had been a queer sound all along, but now I made it out.  Some one else was in the room, sniveling and crying.

“My poor lamb!” it whimpered.  And I knew it was Mrs. Hutchins, Miss Patty’s old nurse.

“Perhaps,” said Miss Patty, “you also deny that you were in Ohio the day before yesterday.”

“I was in Ohio, but I positively assert—­”

“I’ll send for the police, that’s what I’ll do!” Mrs. Hutchins said, with a burst of rage, and her chair creaked.  “How can I ever tell your father?”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Miss Patty.  “Do you want the whole story in the papers?  Isn’t it awful enough as it is?  Mr. Carter, I have asked my question twice now and I am waiting for an answer.”