"Colonel Morehead! The sight of you...." In an instant, Colonel Morehead's thin lips parted in a smile. He made an old-fashioned bow and then sank back into his chair. "You were at Amy Pallet-Searing's to-night," the girl went on, "and you never looked me up. Be good enough to explain yourself, sir!" Colonel Morehead removed his glasses and polished them upon his handkerchief before answering: "I was busy looking up somebody else," he said, and Leslie saw that the smile had left his face as he resumed his tap-tapping on the table with his fingers; she saw, too, that her father's face was a bit white where the skin showed. He looked tired, but his thick Van Dyke bristled aggressively, and his eyebrows breathed the usual defiance. "Where were you, Leslie, that we couldn't find you anywhere?" demanded her step-mother, irritably. "How did you get home?" "Very comfortably in the limousine, thank you," replied Leslie. "Mr. Beekman was good enough----" Colonel Morehead leaped to his feet. "Not Eliot Beekman! What? He came home with you?" He started for the door. "Why, he's the man I've been looking for. Where is he now?" "Undoubtedly home, by this time," said Leslie. The Colonel again reseated himself and drummed loudly with his fingers. "Hang it!" he ejaculated. "If I'd only known.... He could have been with us here now. We need him--and badly." Wilkinson looked puzzled. "Why do we need him?" Wilkinson asked the question in a voice in which excitement still held sway. "That's what I should like to know!" put in Mrs. Wilkinson, gulping down, not without audible satisfaction, her customary night-cap. Leslie blushed as she added that the question likewise was of interest to her. "We're disgraced, that's all there is to it!" snapped the mistress of the house, her night-cap, even at this early stage, lending her asperity. "And I the most of all! I don't see how this Beekman can help us out?" "I don't myself," admitted her husband. "However, nothing can happen so long as Colonel Morehead sticks to us--nothing." "I have no intention of deserting you, don't be alarmed," declared Colonel Morehead. "But for all that, I want this man Beekman--I need him." And so saying he lifted from the small table a document consisting of several sheets of carbon-copy. "Miss Wilkinson," he said gravely, handing it to her. "No--there's nothing in it to startle you, only you should know, I think, we all ought to understand.... If you'll read this, you'll know what happened to your father this afternoon." Puzzled at first, the girl slowly read the flimsy document as she stood there in the middle of the room. "Oh!" she wailed, as its meaning dawned upon her. "They had no right to do this--no right whatever!" "You're sure you understand it?" interrogated the Colonel. The girl bowed her head gravely. Then, going over to her father,--wholly unconscious of a curious look on Flomerfelt's face,--she threw her arms about his neck.