Arthur was up in arms. Struck with consternation, he saw a constable beckoning to Cora to come out of the crowd which surrounded her. The girl, with a frightened scream, which contrasted strongly with the calmness shown by the others, tried to hide herself among the crowd. Arthur at once tried to place himself between her and the police, so that she might make her escape, as she appeared to wish to do, into the card-room. But Cecil Jones was confronting her, and he smiled, and said gently-- “It’s of no use, Mr. Aldington. You’d better advise the young lady to take things quietly. Especially as we shall do her but little harm.” Cora, however, instead of profiting by this advice, began to weep so violently, to utter so many hysterical protests that she “had had nothing to do with it, nothing whatever, that they told her it would be all right, and that they ought to confess it now,” that Cecil Jones made a sign to two of the constables, who gently made their way through the group of guests, and taking the weeping girl by the arms, led her back into the middle room, with Arthur Aldington, protesting indignantly, in close attendance. When once she was free from the pressure of the crowd, however, Cora suddenly resisted the attempts which they were about to make to lay her on the sofa, and springing upright, said-- “If you’ll let me go I’ll tell you everything I know. It isn’t really very much, and I’m real sorry now I ever took up with these people. My engagement was to sing, that’s all: one hundred and fifty dollars a day, and expenses. And I was to know nothing. Well, and I don’t know anything, except that the police have come in. Now you’ll let me go, won’t you?” “I don’t suppose you’ll be detained long, miss,” said one of the men. “But as your name has been given us with the rest, we’re bound to take you before the magistrate with them. It won’t be more than a formal business as far as you’re concerned, I daresay, if you can prove what you’ve told us.” “But I don’t want to be taken off as if I were a criminal,” said Cora plaintively. “It’s not fair!” “Let me be answerable for the lady’s appearance at any time you may want her,” said Arthur quickly. But the ungrateful Cora turned upon him and stamped her foot. “Oh, no,” she said, “I’ll not have you answerable for me. I’d rather go through it myself. I’ve had to be civil to everybody so long that now I must just speak out and freely say what’s in my mind. Mr. Aldington, you’re a fool. You might have known how things were going, as your friend Buckland did. He’s made himself safe, and I respect him for it. He’s taken care to be on the right side.” Arthur was stupefied by this rebuff. Retreating with a few muttered words, neither very coherent nor very intelligible, he turned and met Delia who had made no attempt to resist the constables, and who stood erect between two of them, with an air of boredom upon her handsome face.