With a thunderous slam, the door was closed. Loud voices in hot argument came from the room, and then there was silence. Chester had evidently given up in despair of getting rid of his guests. Ann moved on up the steps. In the room on the left the light was still burning, she could see a pencil of it under the door-shutter. To this she groped and softly rapped, bending her ear to the key-hole to listen. There was no sound within. Ann rapped again, more loudly, her hand on the latch. She listened again, and this time she was sure she heard a low moan. Turning the bolt, she found the door locked, but at the same instant noticed that the key had been left in the door on the outside. Turning the key, Ann opened the door, went in, and softly closed the opening after her. A lamp, turned low, stood on the mantel-piece, and in its light she saw a crouching figure in a chair. It was Virginia, her face covered with her hand, moaning piteously. "Let me go home, for God’s sake, let me go home!" she cried, without looking up. "You said I was to get the money, if I came only to the door, and now—oh, oh!" The girl buried her face still deeper in her apron and sobbed. Ann, an almost repulsive grimace on her impassive face, stood over her and looked about the quaintly furnished room with its quiet puritanical luxury of space, at the massive mahogany centre-table, with carved legs and dragon-heads supporting the polished top, the high-posted bed and rich, old, faded canopy, the white counterpane and pillows looking like freshly fallen snow. "Thank God," Ann said, aloud. Virginia heard, sat as if stunned for an instant, and then with a stare of bewilderment looked up. "Oh!" she gasped. "I thought it was—" "I know, huh, child! nobody could know better than I do. Don’t ask me what I come here for. I don’t know any better than you do, but I come, and I’m going to get you out of it—that is, if I’m in time to do any good at all. Oh, you understand me, Virginia Hemingway. If I’m in time, you’ll march out of here with me, if not, God knows you might as well stay here as anywhere else." "Oh, Mrs. Boyd, how can you ask me such an awful—" "Well, then, I won’t!" Ann said, more softly. "Besides, I can see the truth in your young face. The Almighty has put lights in the eyes of women that only one thing can put out. Yours are still burning." Virginia rose to her feet and clutched Ann’s strong arm convulsively. "Oh, if you only knew _why_ I came, you’d not have the heart to think me absolutely bad. Mrs. Boyd, as God is my Judge, I came because he—" "You needn’t bother to tell me anything about it," Ann grunted, with a shrug of her shoulders. "I know why you come; if I hadn’t suspicioned the truth I’d have let you alone, but I ain’t going to tell you why I come. I come, that’s all. I come, and if we are going to get out of here without a scandal we’ve got to be slick about it. Those devils are still carousing down there. Let’s go now while the parlor door is shut."