"Flora, it includes me! Ah, for one more evening with you I am risking--" Her look grew fond though she made a gesture of despair: "Oh, short-sighted! Go, give it him! Go!" Across the hall a prolonged carol of acclamation, confabulation, laughter, and cries of "Ah-r, indeed!" told that Anna's word was out. "What difference," Irby lingered to ask, "can an hour or two between trains--?" But the throng was upon them. "We don't know!" cried Flora. "Give it him! We don't know!" and barely had time herself to force a light laugh when here were Charlie and Victorine, Hilary, Anna, Miranda, Madame, Constance, Mandeville, and twenty others. "Fred!" called Hilary. His roaming look found the gray detective: "Where's Captain Greenleaf?" "Gone." "With never a word of good-by? Oh, bless my soul, he _did_ say good-by!" There was a general laugh. "But this won't do. It's not safe for him--" The gray man gently explained that his younger associate was with Greenleaf as bodyguard. The music of harp and violins broke out and dancers swept round the brass gun and up and down the floors. XL THE LICENSE, THE DAGGER Hilary had bent an arm around Anna when Flora called his name. Irby handed him the order. A glance made it clear. Its reader cast a wide look over the heads of the dancers and lifting the missive high beckoned with it to Mandeville. Then he looked for some one else: "Charlie!" "Out on the veranda," said a passing dancer. "Send him here!" The commander's eye came back to Irby: "Old man, how long have you had this?" "About an hour." "Oh, my stars, Adolphe, you should have told me!" It was a fair sight, though maddening to Flora yonder by the glass case, to see the two cousins standing eye to eye, Hilary's brow dark with splendid concern while without a glance at Anna he passed her the despatch and she read it. "Steve," he said, as the Mandeville pair pressed up, "look at that! boots-and-saddles! now! to-night! for you and Adolphe and me! Yes, Charlie, and you; go, get your things and put Jerry on the train with mine." The boy's partner was Victorine. Before she could gasp he had kissed her. Amid a laugh that stopped half the dance he waved one farewell to sister, grandmother and all and sprang away. "Dance on, fellows," called Hilary, "this means only that I'm going with you." The lads cheered and the dance revived. Their captain turned: "Miss Flora, I promised your brother he should go whenever--" "But me al-_so_ you promised!" she interrupted, and a fair sight also, grievous to Irby, startling to Anna, were this pair, standing eye to eye. "Yes," replied Kincaid, "and I'll keep my word. In any extremity you shall come to him."