"You mustn't be afraid," he said, "that I mean to stay at the Savoy myself. Even if I'd been stopping there, I should move if I were going to put you in the hotel. But I have my own lair in London. I've been over here a number of times. Indeed, I'm partly English, born in Canada, though I've spent most of my life in the United States. Nobody at the Savoy but the Countess de Santiago knows who I am, and she'll understand that it may be convenient for me to change my name. Nelson Smith is a respectable one, and she'll respect it! "Now, my plan is to ask for her (she'll be in by this time), have a few words of explanation on the quiet, not to embarrass you; and the Countess will do the rest. She'll engage a room for you next to her own suite, or as near as possible; then you'll be provided with a chaperon." "I'm not anxious about myself, but about you," Annesley said. "You haven't told me yet what happened after you went upstairs at Mrs. Ellsworth's, and how you knew those men were gone. I suppose you did know? Or--did you chance it?" "I was as sure as I needed to be," Nelson Smith answered. "A moment after I switched on the electricity in the room up there I heard a taxi drive away. I turned off the light so I could look out. By flattening my nose against the glass I could see that the place where those chaps had waited was empty; but in case the taxi was only turning, and meant to pass the house again, I lit the room once more, for realism. "That's what kept me rather long--that, and waiting for the dragon to go. Otherwise I should have been down before Ruthven Smith trapped me. "For a second it looked as if the game of life was up. And then I found out how much you meant to me. It was _you_ I thought of. It seemed beastly hard luck to leave you fast in that old woman's clutches!" Annesley put out her hand with a warm impulse. He took it, raising it to his lips, and both were startled when the taxi stopped. They had arrived at the Savoy: and though Annesley seemed to have lived through a lifetime of emotion, just one hour and thirty minutes had passed since she and her companion drove away from these bright revolving doors. The foyer was as brilliant and crowded as when they left at half-past ten. People were parting after supper; or they were lingering in the restaurant beyond. Nobody paid the slightest attention to the newcomers, and Annesley settled down unobtrusively in a corner, while her companion went to scribble a line to the Countess de Santiago. When he had finished, and sent up the letter, he did not return, and again the girl had a few moments of suspense, thinking of the danger which might not, after all, be over. Just as she had begun to be anxious, however, she saw him coming with a wonderful woman. Annesley could have laughed, remembering how he had said the Countess would "mother" her. Any one less motherly than this Juno-like beauty in flame-coloured chiffon over gold tissue it would be hard to imagine.