"It is a bit important," I replied, thinking grimly of the thirty-thousand-dollar contribution to the Council of Nine, the thousand rifles, and Peter Bolton’s self-revelations in his attempt to bribe me. "I’ve been hunting Mr. Kendrick all day about it. But it has kept without spoiling for eight or nine hours already, so another sixty minutes will do no harm." "Well, then," said Miss Kendrick, "I won’t keep you standing in the hall. I came out when your name was announced, to let you know that Mr. Baldwin is in the library, and Mercy will be down in a few minutes. So you can have your choice of waiting in there, or you can find an easy chair in uncle’s den." "Oh, if that is the choice, give me the library, by all means." "You may think your tone is complimentary, but I’ll tell you I don’t consider it so. He’s a very agreeable man, and you had better be very civil, or I shall banish you to the den, after all." Then she changed her half-bantering tone to one of earnestness, and halted me at the library door. "What is it you are about?" she asked. "Is uncle in danger?" "I believe not," I replied. She laid her hand upon my arm. "You would not answer so unless he were. What is it that you fear?" And her brown eyes looked anxiously up into mine. "There is no danger that I can learn of that threatens your uncle. I believe he is perfectly safe." She threw my arm aside with a gesture of irritation. "Do you think I have not the right to know?" she exclaimed. "Do you think I could be of no use? Do you think I ought to be shut up in the dark, wondering what is going to happen?" "You are worrying yourself without need," I said. "You can hold me responsible for his safety." "It is the trouble with old Mr. Bolton, is it not?" she asked after a pause. I balanced the advantages of a lie and the truth. "Yes, it is on that business that I am engaged." "And you will tell me nothing about it." There was a trace of bitterness in her tone, and giving a shrug of resentful resignation she opened the door to the library and preceded me into the room. Mr. Baldwin sat there wrapped in his superiority to all created things, and gave me a stiff nod of recognition, but melted into something resembling geniality as Laura Kendrick took a chair by his side. Mercy Fillmore had come in at the other door while we had been carrying on our skirmish in the hall, and now made room for me on the sofa beside her. "I’m glad you came," she said. "I wanted to ask you something." The soothing quality of Mercy Fillmore’s voice and manner was doubly welcome after the rasping that Laura Kendrick had managed to inflict upon my spirit as the just punishment for the crime of incommunicativeness. I responded to Miss Fillmore’s greeting with fitting words. "Well," she continued, "what I wanted to ask you was this: Do you think there is any danger to this house from having the Chinese girl here?"