It seemed as if I had no more than closed my eyes (and, as I afterwards found, it had actually only been about ten minutes since the last door locked and the last gas-jet was turned off) when the consciousness of disturbance somewhere about the house roused me. Someone was shouting out of a window, and being answered from below. The sash slammed; and presently there was the sound of stockinged feet padding downstairs. Kitty waked up, and crossly suggested that one of the guests had forgot something, and come back for it. "Of all things at this time of night!" she snapped. "Might have waited till daylight, seems to me. Some people have no sense!" The bolts of the front door rattled, the hall-gas flashed up, sending a dim shaft of light through our transom; and a rumble of voices arose. Then the feet padded back, and there was some stir in Mrs. Pallinder's room. "Oh, bother! Whatever it is, they'll never find it to-night in this mess," said Kitty vigorously. She sat up in bed. "Why don't they tell 'em to go home, and let us have a little peace and quiet?" That simple expedient, however, did not seem to occur to anyone else. One of the girls awake in the next room called in that somebody must have lost some money or jewelry--"they couldn't be coming back for anything else." Again the feet padded down. The rumbling talk increased in volume. We distinctly heard Colonel Pallinder's voice, raised in explanation or argument, it was impossible to guess which; Mrs. Pallinder or someone in skirts went rustling along the hall. Apparently she paused to lean over the banister and listen a while. Lights began to start up elsewhere in the house; there was some movement among the men in their reservation; and old Mrs. Botlisch challenged raucously from her room at the end of the passage to know what was the matter. No one answered her, and after a moment there came a tap at our door. I got out of bed and opened it, full of uneasy wonder. There stood Mrs. Pallinder in a flowered blue silk tea-gown flung on anyway over her nightdress, and flowing about her in a huddle of lace and ribbons; she clutched it together at the throat; thin wisps of straw-coloured hair hung around her face. There was something indefinably alarming in the very haste and carelessness of her appearance, she who was always powdered and corseted to a fashion-plate correctness. She looked the scared ghost of her everyday self, immeasurably older, and a surprising likeness to Mrs. Botlisch came out on her harassed features. "So sorry to disturb you, my dear," she said, with a tortured smile. "But can you wake Mazie--I want to speak to her." "Nobody's sick, is there?" I asked, startled. "Is it a telegram? It's not bad news for anyone, is it?" Kitty cried out apprehensively from the bed. "No, no, it's nothing--really nothing at all," repeated Mrs. Pallinder--and this was so palpably false that even I could see through it. "Tell Mazie to come here, please, I want to speak to her."