I wouldn’t have believed my watch, had not Mr. Smith’s majestic time-piece confirmed the fact that it was only nine o’clock in the morning. Heavens, what a day! It had begun for me when Judy whispered my name through the window just before dawn, a bare five hours ago. Already it seemed a week. And there were people in this house now, plenty of them, just waking up and thinking lazily about breakfast; people to whom it still figured as the wedding day of Judith Corbin and Bruce Applebury! I must have uttered some sort of consternated exclamation, for old Mrs. Corbin nodded at me with a grim smile. “This is only the beginning of it,” she said. “Go down and have breakfast, both of you, and then come up at ten o’clock to my sitting-room. I’m an old woman--worse than old--and I can’t put things off. I must settle them now, while I can. Take me down to my room, Punch.” CHAPTER XIX THE AUTOCRAT We made a rather silent meal, served imperturbably by Belden. I found myself wondering whether that perfect butler’s manner would survive the events which this volcanic day was likely to bring forth. Did he foresee, or even allow himself to guess, what they might be? If I’d been alone with him I would have sounded him out, since he and I are friends of long standing, but in the presence of a comparative stranger like Mr. Smith it wasn’t possible. Just as we finished Victoria came in and the old gentleman, perceiving that she wanted to talk to me, withdrew with his cigar for a stroll in the veranda. She wasted no time after he had gone. “You don’t owe me any favors,” she began candidly. “I haven’t been any too decent to you, lately, but I believe you’ll help all the same.” “I’m glad you believe that,” I told her. “I wish you wouldn’t think of me as unfriendly. I’ll be glad to do all I can to help you as soon as I know what it is that wants to be done.” “There’s only one possible thing to do,” she asserted urgently. “There can’t be two opinions about that; not two sane opinions. And if we’re going to save anything at all out of the wreck we’ve got to do it at once. But it can’t be done--nothing can be done--till my mother-in-law can be persuaded to consent to it. You know she won’t listen to me--so I’m putting it up to you.” “I still don’t know what the thing is,” I told her. “If it aims in any way at a reconciliation between Judy and Bruce Applebury, looking toward their marriage....” She interrupted me with a sharp laugh. “We’re long past that,” she answered me. “They’re leaving, the whole crowd, on the eleven o’clock train to town. Do you wonder?” “Not a bit. They’ll have had enough of the Wild West, that crowd, to last them another ten generations. Think of the myth that will grow up among them, to terrify wayward little Appleburys with.” Victoria smiled at that in spite of herself. “Oh, if you want to joke about it....” she said petulantly.