Fortunately, at first, there was little necessity for her speaking. The bride and groom were too joyously loquacious to allow her much chance for words, and too bubbling over with their love and with the spirit of daring mischief to be observant of any strangeness in her demeanor that the darkness did not mask. As they chattered on, Mrs. De Peyster began to regain some slight steadiness--enough to consider spasmodically how she was to escape undiscovered from the pair, how she was to extricate herself from the predicament of the moment--for beyond that moment's danger she had not the power to think. She had decided that she must somehow get away from the couple at once; in the darkness slip unobserved into her sitting-room; lock the door; remain there noiseless;--she had decided so much, when suddenly her wits were sent spinning by a new fear. The real Matilda! Mrs. De Peyster's ears, at that moment frantically acute, registered dim movements of Matilda overhead. Suppose the real Matilda should hear their voices; suppose she should come walking down into the scene! With two Matildas simultaneously upon the stage-- Mrs. De Peyster reached out and clutched the banister of the stairway with drowning hands. The pair talked on to her, answering themselves. They would take the rooms above Mrs. De Peyster's suite, they said--they would give her, Matilda, no trouble at all--they would attend to their own housework, everything--and so on, and so on, with Mrs. De Peyster hearing nothing, but reaching aurally out for Matilda's exposing tread. To forestall this exposure, she started weakly up the stairs, only to be halted by the slipping of Jack's arm around her shoulder. The couple chattered on about their household arrangements, and Mrs. De Peyster the prisoner of Jack's affectionate arm, stood gulping, as though her soul were trying to swallow itself, ready to sink through her floor at the faintest approach of her housekeeper's slippers. And then again the arm of the exuberant Jack tightened about her. "Oh, say, what a wild old time we're going to have! Won't we, Matilda?" "Ye--yes," Mrs. De Peyster felt constrained to answer. "But it's mighty dangerous!" cried the little figure, with a shivery laugh. "Dangerous!" chuckled Jack with his mischievous glee. "Well, rather! And that's half the fun. If the newspapers were to get on to the fact that the son of _the_ Mrs. De Peyster had secretly married without his mother's knowledge, and that the young scamp and his wife were secretly living in her house--can't you just see the reporters jimmying open every window to get at us!" "Oh!" breathed Mrs. De Peyster faintly. "Really, Jack," protested the girlish voice, "I think it's scandalous of us to be doing this!"