"You don't know that she is engaged to Mr. Lindley, Hedrick." "Get out!" he hooted. "What's the use talking like that to me? A blind mackerel could see she's let poor old Lindley think he's High Man with her these last few months; but he'll have to hit the pike now, I reckon, 'cause this Corliss is altogether too pe-rin-sley for Dick's class. Lee roy est mort. Vive lee roy!" "Hedrick, won't you please run along? I want to change my dress." "What for? There was company for dinner and you didn't change then." Laura's flushed cheeks flushed deeper, and in her confusion she answered too quickly. "I only have one evening gown. I--of course I can't wear it every night." "Well, then," he returned triumphantly, "what do you want to put it on now for?" "_Please_ run along, Hedrick," she pleaded. "You didn't for this Corliss," he persisted sharply. "You know Dick Lindley couldn't see anybody but Cora to save his life, and I don't suppose there's a girl on earth fool enough to dress up for that Wade Trum----" "Hedrick!" Laura's voice rang with a warning which he remembered to have heard upon a few previous occasions when she had easily proved herself physically stronger than he. "Go and tell mother I'm coming," she said. He began to whistle "Beulah Land" as he went, but, with the swift closing of the door behind him, abandoned that pathetically optimistic hymn prematurely, after the third bar. Twenty minutes later, when Laura came out and went downstairs, a fine straight figure in her black evening gown, the Sieur de Marsac--that hard-bitten Huguenot, whose middle-aged shabbiness was but the outward and deceptive seeming of the longest head and the best sword in France--emerged cautiously from the passageway and stood listening until her footsteps were heard descending the front stairs. Nevertheless, the most painstaking search of her room, a search as systematic as it was feverish, failed to reveal where she had hidden the book. He returned wearily to the porch. A prophet has always been supposed to take some pleasure, perhaps morbid, in seeing his predictions fulfilled; and it may have been a consolation to the gloomy heart of Hedrick, sorely injured by Laura's offensive care of her treasure, to find the grouping upon the porch as he had foretold: Cora and Mr. Corliss sitting a little aloof from the others, far enough to permit their holding an indistinct and murmurous conversation of their own. Their sequestration, even by so short a distance, gave them an appearance of intimacy which probably accounted for the rather absent greeting bestowed by Mr. Lindley upon the son of the house, who met him with some favour.