"I'll be puttin' this in the durway, then, and Miss Delia Nolan said for me to say for ye to please wait an hour for her, an' she'd surely come. She does be needed in the bedrooms upstairs to watch the ladies' clothes f'r fear they'd be stolen, she says. But if ye'll wait the hour, she'll be with you, with more, maybe, if she can get it. Trust me for the horses, sir!" There was a rattle and a thud as of some heavy object deposited on the floor in the open door, and the messenger scurried away. Antony looked cautiously around the door, and as he looked his eyes grew large and round, for there before him lay a mammoth tray filled with dainties to wake an appetite in one far less famished than poor Antony. Two half-emptied bottles reared their grateful promise high in the middle, and the jellied fowl vied with the crusted croquet, the rich pâté gleamed among the feathery wheaten rolls, the lobster nestled coyly in his luscious mayonnaise, seeming indeed to blush under the young man's ardent and devouring gaze. Breathlessly he lifted it, eagerly he bore it to that musty upper room, and there, with soft little cries of surprise from her and long-drawn sighs of satisfaction from him, they fell upon it. With every morsel of the food, with every throatful of the heartening, still beaded wine, courage, nay, audacity, crept softly over their jaded spirits, as the gentle but inevitable tide creeps up the beach. "To Miss Delia Nolan!" he cried lightly, raising high his glass; "long life to her and her coachman!" And "long life to her and her coachman!" Nette echoed, smiling from the broken chair she sat upon at Antony, who knelt before the tray. Through the chinks of the closed, dusty blinds vivid pencils of light streaked her delicate dress: she gleamed like a modish crocus in the bare lumber room. The rich viands before her, the dainty opalescence of the frozen sweet she held in a tinted, flower-shaped glass, the very dusk of the closed chamber, making her youth and loveliness more jewel-like, all enhanced the piquancy of the picture she presented. Antony's resolution flamed high in him: should such pluck, such beauty, such resource, be captured now, now after all they had gone through? Never! He swore it. As he registered this oath she rose lightly from her chair, and still jealously protecting her billowy skirts, began to peer about the room. Of a sudden she stopped and stood like a pointer dog, one finger raised to command his attention. "What is in that basket?" she whispered excitedly.