“You don’t regret it, do you?” I asked. “You love Judy, and you know her. You wouldn’t want her to marry a man like that!” “Oh, I suppose not,” she admitted. “He shouldn’t have told her, when he did, that he’d lent me money. And of course he shouldn’t have tried to make us think that Bill had stolen the necklace. “But what’s the good talking about that? Do you realize what’s supposed to happen to-day? There are more than a thousand people who’ve been invited to this wedding. There’s a special train coming down from town. It’s to leave at two o’clock. And there’ll be hundreds coming from all around the county in cars. “There’s just one thing to do, unless we mean to have Belden meet them at the gate and send them home. Judy’s grandmother’s got to be suddenly ill. She could be easily enough. Everybody knows about her. With all this excitement it’s likely to happen before night, anyhow. “But if she’ll agree to it now, within the next half-hour or so, we can call up all the afternoon papers in town and tell them the wedding’s been postponed on account of it. We can cancel the special train and have someone at the station to tell them about it. We can telephone to a lot of people who’d be driving, and Belden can turn back the rest. The real story will get around, of course, but that won’t matter so much. Even the people here in the house will have to pretend to believe what we tell them.” “Have you outlined that plan to Mrs. Corbin?” I asked. “That’s all it would need to make her turn it down,” she said hotly. “Even if it had been her own idea, she’d jump to something else--heaven only knows what. I want you to put it up to her.” “Does Judy agree to it?” I perceived that she evaded this question. “It was Judy’s own idea when she wrote me that note, last night,” she pointed out. “I don’t see how she could object to it now.” I reflected that a good deal of water had gone under the bridge since Judy had written that note. I told Victoria that the plan sounded reasonable to me and that if nothing better turned up at the council the old lady had called, for ten o’clock--it was nearly that now--I’d advocate it. She was bitterly disappointed at my answer, chose to regard it as a refusal, but it was the best I could do. “She ought to be given something that would put her to sleep for the day. She’s drunk, that’s what she is--oh, with excitement, I mean. There’s simply no telling what she’ll do.” I agreed with the latter part of this statement. I wouldn’t put anything beyond the old woman in her present mood, and I didn’t blame Victoria for feeling jumpy. “She’s shown herself pretty competent, so far this morning,” I pointed out, for whatever consolation there might be in that. “If she can keep it up she may leave our practical wisdom looking foolish.” Victoria showed her opinion of this prophecy by getting up and leaving me. “Do you know where Judy is now?” I asked. She paused to say, “No, I don’t.”