"You're all right if you know that," she whispered softly. "I thought I was going to bring you Eleanor herself," Peter said. "I got on the trail of a girl working in a candy shop out in Yonkers. My faithful sleuth was sure it was Eleanor and I was ass enough to believe he knew what he was talking about. When I got out there I found a strawberry blonde with gold teeth." "Gosh, you don't think she's doing anything like that," Jimmie exclaimed. "I don't know," Peter said miserably. He was looking ill and unlike himself. His deep set gray eyes were sunken far in his head, his brow was too white, and the skin drawn too tightly over his jaws. "As a de-tec-i-tive, I'm afraid I'm a failure." "We're all failures for that matter," David said. "Let's have dinner." Eleanor's empty place, set with the liqueur glass she always drank her thimbleful of champagne in, and the throne chair from the drawing-room in which she presided over the feasts given in her honor, was almost too much for them. Margaret cried openly over her soup. Peter shaded his eyes with his hand, and Gertrude and Jimmie groped for each other's hands under the shelter of the table-cloth. "This--this won't do," David said. He turned to Beulah on his left, sitting immovable, with her eyes staring unseeingly into the centerpiece of holly and mistletoe arranged by Alphonse so lovingly. "We must either turn this into a kind of a wake, and kneel as we feast, or we must try to rise above it somehow." "I don't see why," Jimmie argued. "I'm in favor of each man howling informally as he listeth." "Let's drink her health anyhow," David insisted. "I cut out the Sauterne and the claret, so we could begin on the wine at once in this contingency. Here's to our beloved and dear absent daughter." "Long may she wave," Jimmie cried, stumbling to his feet an instant after the others. While they were still standing with their glasses uplifted, the bell rang. "Don't let anybody in, Alphonse," David admonished him. They all turned in the direction of the hall, but there was no sound of parley at the front door. Eleanor had put a warning finger to her lips, as Alphonse opened it to find her standing there. She stripped off her hat and her coat as she passed through the drawing-room, and stood in her little blue cloth traveling dress between the portieres that separated it from the dining-room. The six stood transfixed at the sight of her, not believing the vision of their eyes. "You're drinking my health," she cried, as she stretched out her arms to them. "Oh! my dears, and my dearests, will you forgive me for running away from you?" CHAPTER XXV THE LOVER They left her alone with Peter in the drawing room in the interval before the coffee, seeing that he had barely spoken to her though his eyes had not left her face since the moment of her spectacular appearance between the portieres.