"I told you he would reappear here, if at all, only as her husband, or possibly her affianced, did I not?" Another nod as cool as the first. "And you turned away in contemptuous unbelief, did you not?" "Contempt certainly, but unbelief--not entirely." Elmendorf was fairly trembling with wrath by this time. The idea that this simple, unlettered, friendless "girl of the people" should so coolly brave him--him on whose words enraptured ears were wont to hang, at whose eloquence enthusiastic hundreds burst into applause! It stung him to the very marrow of his conceit. Something must be said or done to bring her to her knees, and, believing that she loved and dearly loved the man in question, he prepared his final _coup_. "Well, it may modify your contempt to know that my words have come true." "That Mr. Forrest was ordered away in disgrace?" she calmly asked. "Not so much that, as that he has returned, brought back, as I said, by Miss Allison." "Why, but that is no news at all. I knew he was coming, and I saw them together this morning." "You--saw them--and you knew he was coming?" faltered the tutor. "You mean to--you mean he writes to you,--that you correspond with him?" "I mean nothing whatsoever beyond what I said, Mr. Elmendorf,--that I knew Mr. Forrest would be here this week, that I saw them this morning; and, as it is his work that lies here unfinished, interrupted by this visitation, I may now, I presume, return to my business--and you to yours." "Then he has been here, too?" "Yes, and will be again,--another reason, perhaps, why you would better not linger. I will open the door now,--since it is to let you out." "Yes, and to let him in, I suppose, and see him behind locked doors, as you doubtless have before, Miss Wallen----" "The door is both unlocked and open, Mr. Elmendorf," said she, throwing it wide, but now in her turn the girl was quivering with indignation. "Furthermore, one touch on this button brings our janitor here--Mr. Wells speaks of him as 'our bouncer.'" And her white hand poised not six inches from the button. Elmendorf took a long breath. "You may consider this a moral victory, Miss Wallen," said he, backing to the portal, "but you will do well to remember this. As I have said before, I have a duty to perform that I owe to society,--to my employers on the one hand, to the people on the other. Rest you well assured that whatever may have been his successes, so called, in the past, there are two schemes of your paragon, Mr. Forrest, that shall fail, even if I have to fight him through the public press. In one or other, separately, he may be too much for my efforts, but at one and the same time that accomplished _roue_ shall never win a wife in that household and a mistress here."