Winter would have said that he was too old a man to stay awake all night, when he had a normal temperature; yet he saw the stars come out and the stars fade on that fateful April night. He entered his room at the hour when midnight brushes the pale skirts of dawn and misguided cocks are vociferating their existence to an indifferent world. Before he came there had been a long council with Mercer and his aunt. Mercer, who had been successful in his mission, had barely seen his chief for a moment before a gentle but imperious nurse ordered him away. Winter caught a queer, abrupt laugh from the financier. The latter beckoned to him. “See you are as obedient as I am when your time comes,” he chuckled; and he chuckled again when both the soldier and Miss Smith blushed over his awkward jocoseness. Yet, the next moment he extended his hand with his formal, other-generation courtesy and took Miss Janet’s shapely, firm fingers in his own lean and nervous grasp. “Allow me to offer you both my sincere congratulations,” began he, and halted, his eyes, which seemed so incurious but were so keen, traveling from the woman’s confusion to the man’s. “I beg your pardon; I understood--Archie who was here, gave me to understand--and I heard you singing; you will hardly believe it, but years ago _I_ sang that to my wife.” “So far as I am concerned, it _is_ settled,” said the colonel steadily. “We are all,” Keatcham continued, no longer with any trace of embarrassment, as he touched the hand which he still held with his own other hand, “we are all, as you know, my dear young lady, in considerable personal peril; I regret that it should be on my account; but it really is not my fault; it is because I will not relax my pursuit of a great scoundrel who is dangerous to all decent people. But being in such danger, I think you will be glad afterward if you are generously frank, and give up something of the sex’s prerogative to keep a lover on the anxious seat. Excuse me if--if I presume on my age and my privileges as a patient.” Janet lifted her sweet eyes and sent one glance as fleeting and light as the flash of a bird’s wing. “I--I--reckon it is settled,” murmured she; but immediately she was the nurse again. “Mr. Keatcham, you are staying awake much too late. Here is Colvin, who will see to anything you want. Good night.” It was then that Mr. Keatcham had taken the colonel’s breath away by kissing Janet’s hand; after which he shook hands with the colonel with a strange new cordiality, and watched them both go away together with a look on his gaunt face unlike any known to Colvin.