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 with your gentle cousin as soon as possible, and I desire that we shall part without any formal blows."

That was all that Don could learn of the matter. He thought it over. With the arrival of coffee and cigars, he concluded to let the affair rest until Pittsey's dissolution of partnership should make it possible to discover the whole truth. When Walter proposed that they finish the night at a theatre, Don said: "I ought to go—I have some letters I should write." But Walter would not hear of such a way of wasting an evening. "You haven't many more nights free," he said. And Don went with them irresolutely.

It was nearly midnight when he returned to his lodgings, but as he came cautiously upstairs he saw a thread of light under Margaret's door. He tapped on a panel and called under his voice: "How have you been?"

The door burst open as if it had been set on a spring. Margaret confronted him. "Someone She's coming! She knows I was on the stage. Someone has told her!"

Confused by the suddenness of the light in his eyes and by the anxious appeal for aid that sounded in the hoarse repression of her voice, he stammered: "Wh-what? Who?"

"Mother! Someone! She doesn't say who. She's coming—on her way—now. She won't wait for me to go. She's coming for me. What shall I do?"

She waited for him to answer. He said, at last, inadequately: "Well, tell her you won't go."

"But she'll make me!"