"No; they would blame me, because I'm older--and, besides, a true knight could never stand by and see his Lady Fair blamed, could he? The only thing is for me to go away, and for you to go back home with Riley, and then, later, for me to storm the castle and carry you off." "But if you did that, you might carry off Alice instead of me," she objected. "That's so," Allen assented, laughing, "unless she hurries up and gets married. That was our agreement, Lady Pat--as long as Alice is free, we can't make any plans for ourselves." "Wouldn't it be grand to have you storm the castle and carry me off!" Patricia was quite taken by the idea. "Anyhow, next to Alice, you love me best, don't you, Sir Launcelot?" "I certainly do," Allen said, truthfully. "Now, you'll go home with Riley and wait to see what happens, won't you?" "All right," the child said, entirely satisfied. "Gee, but I wish Mr. Covington would hurry up!" Patricia rose obediently and took Riley's hand, as they left the room. "Wit ye well," she said as she bade Allen good-bye at the elevator. "I shall wait at the window with a silken ladder every night until you come." Allen turned slowly back into his room, closed the door, and sat down alone on the window-seat which had so recently also sustained his animated little companion. Not until now had the full force of the wrench come upon him, and he was conscious of a lump in his throat as he thought of Alice, first always, then of Mr. Gorham, and last of the city itself. During the months since he had accidentally met Alice in Washington, there had never been a wavering of his purpose. She was the one girl to him among the many he met during the social rounds into which he had plunged while living in New York. He had been undaunted by her attitude, undismayed by the seeming hopelessness of it all--but now her very sympathy proved to him the necessity of at last giving up the one great hope upon which he had set his heart. The pain at separating from his chief, while of a different nature, was no less keen. Mr. Gorham still stood to Allen as the epitome of the best that a man could express. The shock which had come to him when Gorham admitted a knowledge of Covington's investment of Alice's money, did not weaken his respect for the man, but rather was the final event to convince him that his own conception of business must be entirely wrong. If Mr. Gorham sanctioned it, then it was right, it could be nothing else; but all his efforts, conscientious as he knew them to have been, to master the intricacies of the code his preceptor had tried to teach him, had accomplished nothing.