Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 13844-h.htm or 13844-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/8/4/13844/13844-h/13844-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/8/4/13844/13844-h.zip) NO. 13 WASHINGTON SQUARE by LEROY SCOTT 1914 [Illustration: "I NEVER SUSPECTED I'D END IN SUCH A LITTLE BLAZE"] CONTENTS I. THE GREAT MRS. DE PEYSTER II. ENTER AN AMIABLE YOUNG GENTLEMAN III. MISTRESS OF HER HOUSE IV. A SLIGHT PREDICAMENT V. THE HONOR OF THE NAME VI. BEHIND THE BLINDS VII. NOT IN THE PLAN VIII. THE HONEYMOONERS IX. THE FLIGHT X. PEACE--OF A SORT XI. THE REVEREND MR. PYECROFT XII. HOME AGAIN XIII. THE HAPPY FAMILY XIV. THE ATTIC ROOM XV. DOMESTIC SCENES XVI. THE MAN IN THE CELLULOID COLLAR XVII. A QUESTION OF IDENTITY XVIII. THE THIRD FLIGHT XIX. A PLEASANT HERMITAGE XX. MATILDA BREAKS IT GENTLY XXI. THE VEILED LADY XXII. A FAMILY REUNION XXIII. MR. PYECROFT TAKES CHARGE ILLUSTRATIONS "I NEVER SUSPECTED I'D END IN SUCH A LITTLE BLAZE" "WHAT'S THAT YOU'RE CARRYING?" "IT IS REALLY A REMARKABLE LIKENESS" MATILDA UNLOCKED THE SERVANTS' DOOR "SAME PAPER--SAME HANDWRITING!" "SO--SO IT'S I--THAT'S--THAT'S DEAD!" NO. 13 WASHINGTON SQUARE CHAPTER I THE GREAT MRS. DE PEYSTER It was a raw, ill-humored afternoon, yet too late in the spring for the ministration of steam heat, so the unseasonable May chill was banished from Mrs. De Peyster's sitting-room by a wood fire that crackled in the grate; crackled most decorously, be it added, for Mrs. De Peyster's fire would no more have forgotten itself and shown a boisterous enthusiasm than would one of her admirably trained servants. Beside a small steel safe, whose outer shell of exquisite cabinet-work transformed that fortress against burglarious desire into an article of furniture that harmonized with the comfortable elegance of a lady's boudoir, sat Mrs. De Peyster herself--she was born a De Peyster--carefully transferring her jewels from the trays of the safe to leathern cases. She looked quite as Mrs. De Peyster should have looked: with an aura of high dignity that a sixty-year-old dowager of the first water could not surpass, yet with a freshness of person that (had it not been for her dignity) might have made her early forties seem a blossomy thirty-five. Before the well-bred fire sat a lady whose tears had long since dried that she had shed when she had bid good-bye to thirty. She was--begging the lady's pardon--a trifle spare, and a trifle pale, and though in a manner well enough dressed her clothes had an air of bewilderment, of general irresolution, as though each article was uncertain in its mind as to whether it purposed to remain where it had been put, or casually wander away on blind and timorous adventures.