Now, of course, anybody who knows anything about clothing to-day knows that petticoats don't belong with it. And even if they did, there were about eighty-seven hooks on the back of my gown, and only four that I could reach. "I am very comfortable as I am," I said stubbornly. "Please don't bother about me. I sha'n't make any change." He flung the coat angrily on to a box and turned his back squarely on me. It was maddening to have him think me some prudish little schoolgirl who would say limbs for legs, and who, after showing them for years in very short frocks, suddenly puts on her first long gown and is for denying she has any limbs--that is, legs. Sir George sneezed and drew a long, shuddering breath. "Terrible!" he said. "This is what comes of admitting women to the universities. Would any man in his senses believe that such a situation as this is real?" Nobody answered. Sir George was inspecting the inner room. I had gone to the window, and after a moment Mr. Harcourt joined me there. The thunder, which had ceased, was commencing again, and a blue-white flash threw out the landscape. It showed a long stretch of country road, running with mad little streams of yellow water, the drive curving past and flowing a dignified tributary into the lane, and it revealed something else. _The lodge gates were there, opened back against the shrubbery!_ Under cover of the noise I turned to my companion. "Who are you?" I demanded under my breath. "You are not Basil Harcourt! You had no more right to be in that house than I had." "Save the right of sanctuary," he returned, looking at me oddly. "I got in through the chapel. And what does it matter, anyhow? It is enough for me just now that you are you and I am I." "You are flippant," I retorted cautiously. "Why did you say you had had the gates taken down when they are still there, opened against the hedge?" "Jove! That's a piece of luck," he exclaimed, without troubling to explain. "Why in the world did you say there were no gates?" He opened the door and ran out into the storm. A moment later I saw him testing the hinges, and I flung away from the window. Before he came back he had closed the outer shutters.