"No, you don't!" Mrs. Bundercombe prohibited. "I've a good deal more to say yet. I haven't been dragged over the ocean three thousand miles to have you all slip away directly I arrive. A nice state of things indeed! My husband, Joseph H. Bundercombe, a suspect at Scotland Yard, followed everywhere by detectives; and my daughter----" "Stepdaughter, please," Eve interrupted. "Stepdaughter then!--talking about marrying a man she's probably known about twenty-four hours and met at a bar or in a thieves' kitchen, or something of the sort! If you must marry an Englishman," she continued with rising voice, "why don't you marry Lord Reginald Sidley there? His father is an earl, anyway." "His uncle's one," Reggie put in gloomily, jerking his head toward me. "Old Walmsley's all right." Eve patted his hand. "Good boy!" she said. "You know I never encouraged you--did I, Reggie?'" "Encouraged me!" he protested. "I think, on the whole, you said the rudest things to me I ever heard in my life--from a girl, anyway. I imagine," he added, taking up his hat, "that it's up to me to leave this little domestic gathering." "I'll see you out," Mr. Bundercombe declared with alacrity. Mrs. Bundercombe, with her eyes steadily fixed upon her husband, stepped back until she blocked the doorway. "My dear Hannah!" "Your dear nothing!" she interrupted ruthlessly. "You just sit down by the side of your daughter there and let me tell you both what I think of you and what I'm going to do about it." "I think," I suggested, "a little taxi drive----Your mother and father no doubt have a great deal to say to one another, and you can receive your little lecture later." Eve assented at once; and Mrs. Bundercombe, for some reason or other, only entered a faint protest against our departure. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon and the streets were crowded with every description of vehicle. The sun was still warm; there was a faint pink light in the sky-- a perfume of lilac in the air from the window-boxes and flower-barrows. I took Eve's fingers in mine and held them. I think she knew that something in the nature of an inquisition was coming, for she sat very demure, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. "Eve," I asked, "how about Mrs. Samuelson's jewels?" "They were returned to her from 'a repentant criminal,'" Eve murmured. "And the forged banknotes made by the young man in the Adelphi?" "They were all destroyed as fast as father could buy them," she explained. "He has found the boy a post now with some printer in America." "And the two thousand pounds at the gaming club--that first night?" "Daddy made it three and sent it to a hospital. He thought it would do them more good." "You know, you're a shocking pair!" I said severely. "Paul," she sighed, "you never can know how dull it was at Okata." "I'm jolly glad it was!" I told her. "It gives me a better chance--doesn't it?" "And we'll give daddy a good time whenever we can?" she pleaded.