Mrs. De Peyster, quivering, gulping, glared through her veil at him. A hotel clerk had turned his back on her! And this mere clerk had dared refuse her a room! _Refuse her!_ Because she, _she_, Mrs. De Peyster had not the social tone! Nothing like it had ever happened to her before. Her desire to annihilate that clerk with the suave ambassadorial look, and the Dauphin, and all therein and all appertaining thereunto, was mounting toward explosion, when Matilda clutched her arm. "It's awful, ma'am,--but let's go," she whispered. "What else can we do?" Yes, what else could they do? Mrs. De Peyster's wrath was still at demolitory pressure, but she saw the sense in that question. The next moment the two figures, duplicates of somberness, one magnificently upright, the other shrinking, were re-passing over the muting rugs, through the corridor of noble marble, by the lackeys between whose common palms and the hands of patrician guests was the antiseptic intermediary of white thread gloves. "Perhaps it's just as well, ma'am," Matilda began tremulously as soon as they were in the street, before Mrs. De Peyster's black storm could burst. "How much would that suite have been?" "Perhaps fifty dollars a day." "I only just now thought about it--but--but please, ma'am, did you happen to bring your purse?" "My purse!" Mrs. De Peyster stopped short. "Matilda!"--in a voice chilled with dismay--"I never thought of my purse until this moment! There wasn't time! I haven't a cent!" "And after paying for the cab, ma'am, I have only a little over fifteen dollars." "Matilda!" "Perhaps, ma'am," repeated Matilda, "it was just as well they wouldn't take us." Mrs. De Peyster did not speak. "And what's worse," Matilda faltered, as though the blame was hers, "the hotels won't trust you unless you have baggage. And we have no baggage, ma'am." "Matilda!" There was now real tragedy in Mrs. De Peyster's voice. "What _are_ we going to do?" They walked along the Park, whispering over their unforeseen and unforeseeable predicament. It had many aspects, their situation; it was quickly clear to them that the most urgent aspect was the need of immediate refuge. Other troubles and developments could be handled as they arose, should any such arise. But a place to hide, to sleep, had to be secured within the hour. Also they needed two or three days in which to think matters over calmly, and to apply to them clear reason. And they had only the fifteen dollars in Matilda's black bag. "It seems to me, ma'am," ventured Matilda, "that a rooming-house or a boarding-house would be cheapest." "A boarding-house!" exclaimed Mrs. De Peyster. "But where?" Matilda remembered and reached into her slit pocket. "Yesterday I happened to pick up the card of a boarding-house in the library--I've no idea how it came there. I saved it because my sister Angelica, who lives in Syracuse, wrote me to look up a place where she might stay."