"Anybody would think you were glad because your guardian angel's gone and sliced a rasher off of his mouth," Mr. Gustard observed. By ten o'clock all was quiet in the house. Sylvia chose with the greatest care her equipment for the adventure. She had recently bought a tartan frock, which, not having yet been worn, she felt would excellently become the occasion; this she put on, and plaited her tangled hair in a long pigtail. The result was unsatisfactory, for it made her look too prim for a heroine; she therefore undid the pigtail and tied her hair loosely back with a nut-brown bow. It was still impossibly early for an escape, so Sylvia sat down on the edge of her bed and composed herself to read the escape of Fabrizio from the Sforza tower in Parma. The book in which she read this was not one that she had been able to read through without a great deal of skipping; but this escape which she had only come across a day or two before seemed a divine omen to approve her decision. Sylvia regretted the absence of the armed men at the foot of the tower, but said to herself that, after all, she was escaping with her lover, whereas Fabrizio had been compelled to leave Clelia Conti behind. The night wore away; at half past eleven Sylvia dropped her valise from the window and whistled that she was off with the raggle-taggle gipsies--oh. Then she waited until a ghostly snake was uncoiled from Arthur's window. "My dearest boy, you're an angel," she trilled, in an ecstasy, when she saw him slide safely down into the garden. "Catch Maria," she whispered. "I'm coming myself in a moment." Arthur caught her work-basket, and a faint protesting mew floated away on the darkness. Sylvia wrapped herself up, and then very cautiously, candle in hand, walked across to the door of Monkley's room and listened. He was snoring loudly. She pushed open the door and beheld him fast asleep, a red-and-white beard of cotton wool upon his chin. Then risking all in an impulse to be quick, though she was almost stifled by fear, she hurried across the room to his trunk. He kept all his money in a tin box. How she hoped there was enough to make him rue her flight. Monkley never stirred; the box was safe in her muff. She stole back to her room, blew out the candle, flung the muff down to Arthur, held her breath when the coins rattled, put one leg over the sill, and scrambled down by the ivy. "I wish it had been higher," she whispered, when Arthur clasped her with affectionate solicitude where she stood in the sodden vegetation. "I'm jolly glad it wasn't," he said. "Now what are we going to do?" "Why, find a 'bus, of course!" Sylvia said. "And get as far from Hampstead as possible." "But it's after twelve o'clock," Arthur objected. "There won't be any 'buses now. I don't know what we're going to do. We can't look for rooms at this time of night." "We must just walk as far as we can away from Hampstead," said Sylvia, cheerfully.