Maud and Tom raised a clamor of disapproval: What was the use of running risks? did I think, because I’d been in Chicago for nearly a year, that I was forgotten? did I think the men in Scotland Yard who knew me were all dead? did I think the excitement of the Castlecourt robbery was over and done? I yawned at them, and then told them, with a gentle smile, that they were a “pusillanimous pair.” There might be many men in Scotland Yard who knew me, and that, as they say in Chicago, “is all the good it would do them.” They couldn’t arrest me for sitting peacefully at a theater looking at a play. As for connecting me with Sara Dwight, I would give any one a hundred pounds who, when I was dressed and had my war-paint on, would find in me a single suggestion of the late housemaid at Burridge’s. So I talked them down; and if I didn’t convince them of the reasonableness of my arguments, I at least managed to soothe their fears. I dressed myself with especial care, and when the last rite of my toilet was accomplished looked critically in the glass to see if anything of Sara Dwight remained. The survey contented me. Sara’s mother, if there be such a person, would have denied me. I was all in black, a sweeping, spangly dress I had bought in New York, cut low, and my neck is not my weak point, especially when _crême des violettes_ has been rubbed over it. My hair was waved (Maud does it very well, much better than she cooks, I regret to say), and dressed high, with a small red wreath of geraniums round it. Nose powdered to a probable, ladylike whiteness, a touch of rouge, a tiny _mouche_ near the corner of one eye, and long, black gloves--and, presto change! I wore no jewels--their owners might recognize them. One could hardly say I “wore” the Castlecourt diamonds, which were fastened to my corset with a safety-pin. They were rather uncomfortable, but they were the only thing about me that were. As I stood in front of the glass putting on finishing touches, Maud left the room, and went to the drawing-room to watch for Handsome Harry, who was to drive our hansom. I did not like taking a hired driver, and, thank goodness, I didn’t! I was putting a last _soupçon_ of scarlet on my lips, when she came back, stepping softly, and with her eyes round and uneasy looking. “I don’t know whether I’m nervous,” she says, “but there’s a man just gone by in a hansom, and he leaned out and looked hard at our windows.” “I hope it amused him,” I said, looking critically at my lips, to see if they were not a little too incredibly ruddy. “It’s a harmless and innocent way of passing the time, so we mustn’t be hard on him if it doesn’t happen to be very intellectual. Come, help me on with my cloak, and don’t stand there like Patience on a monument staring at thieves.”