"Not I," lightly answered Coralie. "We two sisters don't interfere with one another's private affairs. I did keep back a letter of Vera's; one she wrote to Pym when we first left home; but I have done so no more. Here comes some tea at last!" "I should have told," I continued in a low tone. "Or taken means myself to see whether my notion was right or wrong." "What did it signify?--when Pym was going away in a day or two. Check to you, Johnny Ludlow." That first game, what with talking and tea-drinking, was a long one. I won it. When Ozias came in for the tea-cups Coralie asked him whether Sir Dace had rung for anything. No, the man answered; most likely his master would remain locked in till bed-time; it was his way when any great thing put him out. "I don't think I can stay for another game," I said to Coralie, as she began to place the men again. "Are you in such a hurry?" cried Coralie, glancing round at the clock: which said twenty minutes to ten. I was not in any hurry at all that night, as regarded myself: I had thought she might not care for me to stay longer. Miss Deveen and Cattledon had gone out to dinner some ten miles away, and were not expected home before midnight. So we began a fresh game. "Why! that clock must have stopped!" Chancing to look at it by-and-by, I saw that it stood at the same time--twenty minutes to ten. I took out my watch. It said just ten minutes past ten. "What does it signify?" said Coralie. "You can stay here till twenty minutes to twelve if you like--and be whirled home in a cab by midnight then." That was true. If---- "Good gracious!" exclaimed Coralie. She was looking at the door with surprised eyes. There stood Verena, her bonnet on; evidently just come in. Verena tripped forward, bent down, and kissed her sister. "Have you been desperately angry, Coral?" she lightly asked, giving me her hand to shake. "I know papa has." "_I_ have not been angry," was Coralie's equable answer: "but you have acted childishly, Verena. And now, where have you been?" "Only in Woburn Place, at Mrs. Ball's," said Verena, throwing off her bonnet, and bringing her lovely flushed face close to the light as she sat down. "When I left here that evening--and really, Johnny, I was sorry not to stay and go in to dinner with _you_," she broke off, with a smile--"I went straight to our old lodgings, to good old Mother Ball. 'They are frightful tyrants at home,' I said to her, 'I'm not sure but they'll serve me as Bluebeard did his wives; and I want to stay with you for a day or two.' There's where I have been all the time, Coral; and I wondered you and papa did not come to look for me." "It is where I fancied you might be," returned Coral. "But I only thought of it on Saturday night. Does that mean check, Johnny?" "Check and mate, mademoiselle." "Oh, how wicked you are!"