"Defaulted!" grinned Rollins. Then with perfectly unprecedented perspicacity his roving glance snatched up suddenly the unmistakable tremor of the May Girl's chin. "Oh, what nonsense!" he said. "There are plenty of other eligible men in the party!" "Oh, but you see--there are not!" laughed Paul Brenswick. "Mr. Delville and I are Married--and our wives won't let us." "Oh, nonsense!" grinned Rollins. Once again his roving glance swept the company. Everybody saw what was coming, turned hot, turned cold, shut his eyes, opened them again, but was powerless to avert. "Why, what's the matter with trying Allan John?" grinned Rollins. The thing was inexcusable! Brutal! Blundering! Absolutely doltish beyond even Rollins's established methods of doltishness. But at last when everybody turned inadvertently to scan poor Allan John's face--there was no Allan John to be scanned. Somewhere through a door or a window--somehow between one blink of the eye and another--Allan John had slipped from the room. "Why--why, Mr. Rollins!" gasped everybody all at once. "Whatever in the world were you thinking of?" "Maybe--maybe--he didn't hear it--after all!" rallied the Bride with the first real ray of hope. "Maybe he just saw it coming," suggested the Bridegroom. "And dodged in the nick of time," said George Keets. "To save not only himself but ourselves," frowned my Husband, "from an almost irretrievable awkwardness. "Why just the minute before it happened," deprecated Ann Woltor, "I was thinking suddenly how much better he looked, how his color had improved,--why his cheeks looked almost red." "Yes, the top of his cheeks," said the May Girl, "were really quite red." Her own cheeks at the moment were distinctly pale. "Where do you suppose he's gone to?" she questioned. "Don't you think that--p'raps--somebody ought to go and find him?" "Oh, for heaven's sake leave him alone!" cried Paul Brenswick. "Leave him alone," acquiesced all the other men. In the moment's nervous reaction and letdown that ensued it was really a relief to hear George Keets cry out, with such poignant amazement from his stand at the window: "Why what in the world is that red-roof out on the rocks?" he cried. In the same impulse both my Husband and myself ran quickly to his side. "Oh, that's all right!" laughed my Husband. "I thought maybe it had blown off or something. Why, that's just the 'Bungalow on the Rocks,'" he explained. "My Husband's study and work-room," I exemplified. "'Forbidden-Ground' is its real name! Nobody is ever allowed to go there without an invitation from--himself!" "Why--but it wasn't there yesterday!" asserted George Keets. "Oh, yes, it was!" laughed my Husband. "It was not!" said George Keets. The sheer unexpected primitiveness of the contradiction delighted us so that neither of us took the slightest offense.