“I’m sure you’ll be safe,” she said, in affected jocosity, “if you’ll push your bed and your chiffonier against your door and see that all your bedroom windows are fast locked. Or you might room with Willis Chase. He has plenty of pluck. He’ll protect you.” Unexpectedly Vail went up to her and took tight hold of both her hands, resisting her peevish efforts to pull them free. “Listen to me,” he said in a maddeningly parental fashion. “You’re a naughty and disagreeable and cross little girl, and you ought to have your fingers spatted and be stood in a corner. I’m ashamed of you. Now run off to bed before you say anything else cranky; you--you _bad_ kid!” She fought to jerk her hands away from his exasperatingly paternal hold. In doing so she bruised one of her fingers against the seal ring he wore. The hurt completed the wreck of her self-control which humiliation had undermined. “Let go of my hands!” she stormed. “You haven’t proved to-night that your own are any too clean.” On the instant he dropped her fingers as if they were white hot. His face went scarlet, then gray. “Oh!” she stammered, in belated horror of what she had said. “Oh, I didn’t mean that! Thax, honestly I didn’t! I--” Miss Gregg and Chase came out into the hall as she was still speaking--as she was still looking appealingly up into the hurt face of the man she had affronted so grievously. “Come, dear!” hailed the old lady. “It’s almost as late as it ever gets to be. Let’s go to bed.” “Good night,” said Thaxton, stiffly, ignoring Doris’s eyes and setting off on his round of the windows. Doris lagged a step after her aunt. Willis Chase made as though to speak lightly to her. Then he caught the look on her remorseful face, glanced quickly toward the back of the departing Vail, and, with a hasty good night to her, made his way upstairs. On the landing he turned and called back to Thaxton: “If I can’t live through the horrors of the magenta room to-night, Thax, I hope they send you to the hoosgow, as contributory cause. Me, I wouldn’t even coop up Oz Creede in a room like that.” Vail made no reply. Stolidly he continued to lock window after window, Macduff pacing along behind him with an air of much importance. Doris Lane took an impulsive step to follow him. But Chase was still leaning over the banisters, above, chanting his plaint about the magenta room. So she sighed and went up to bed. Less than five minutes later, when Thaxton returned to the hallway, his guests had all retired. There was an odd air of desolation and gloom about the usually homelike hall. Vail stood there a moment, musing. Then, subconsciously, he noted that the lowboy drawer still stood open. In absentminded fashion he went over to close it. He paused for a moment or so, with his hand on the open drawer.