With difficulty Ellinor mastered a wild desire to ask where the cat had gone. "Oh, come ye in peace here or come ye in war?" Such injudicious quotation trembled on the tip of her tongue, but she suppressed it--barely in time. She felt herself growing nervous with the fear lest she should be hurried into some all too luminous speech. And still Jeff stood there, lost, speechless, helpless, unready, a clumsy oaf, an object of pity. Pity at last, or a kindred feeling, drove her to the rescue. And, just as she had feared, she said, in her generous haste, far too much. "I thought you were not coming?" The inflection made a question of this statement. Also, by implication, it answered so many questions yet unworded that Jeff was able to use his tongue again; but it was not the trusty tongue of yore--witness this wooden speech: "You mean you thought I said I wasn't coming--don't you? You knew I would come." "Indeed? How should I know what you would do? I've only seen you once. Aren't you forgetting that?" "Why else did you make up as a Friend then?" "Oh! Oh, dear, these men! There's conceit for you! I chose my costume solely to trap Mr. Bransford's eye? Is that it? Doubtless all my thoughts have centered on Mr. Bransford since I first saw him!" "You know I didn't mean that, Miss Ellinor. I----" "Miss Hoffman, if you please!" "Miss Hoffman. Don't be mean to me. I've only got an hour----" "An hour! Do you imagine for one second----Why, I mustn't stay here. This is really a farewell dance given in my honor. We go back East day after to-morrow. I must go in." "Only one little hour. And I have come a long ways for my hour. They take their masks off at midnight--don't they? And of course I can't stay after that. I want only just to ask you----" "Why did you come then? Isn't it rather unusual to go uninvited to a ball?" "Why, I reckon you nearly know why I come, Miss Hoffman; but if you want me to say precisely, ma'am----" "I don't!" "We'll keep that for a surprise, then. Another thing: I wanted to find out just where you live in New York. I forgot to ask you. And I couldn't very well go round asking folks after you're gone--could I? Of course I didn't have any invitation--from Mr. Lake; but I thought, if he didn't know it, he wouldn't mind me just stepping in to get your address." "Well, of all the assurance!" said Miss Ellinor. "Do you intend to start up a correspondence with me without even the formality of asking my consent?" "Why, Miss Ellinor, ma'am, I thought----" "Miss Hoffman, sir! Yes--and there's another thing. You said you had no invitation--from Mr. Lake. Does that mean, by any chance, that I invited you?" "You didn't say a word about my coming," said Jeff. He was a flustered man, this poor Bransford, but he managed to put a slight stress upon the word "say." Miss Ellinor--Miss Hoffman--caught this faint emphasis instantly.