Georgina, brave and intrepid, was still nursing her wrath when a mist came before her eyes. "I see! I feel queer!" she cried. Her companions were shaking like autumn leaves. "Oh, don't pause, sister!" squeaked terrified Julie, "here's where that picaroon in the black mask was wont to hide. A Dick Turpin may be concealed yonder!" "Hist!" called Georgina, as if speaking to some vermin of the night. A shadowy mocking face was rising up before her. She began to tremble--where had she seen it? Yes, 'twas the face of the ancestress whose portrait Jonathan took down from the line of Knickerbockers in the parlor. "My nerves," she gasped. "Come, let us haste, you trembling fools!" Once in the driveway to the house she denied her fright. Betty was scolded for stumbling over a brier-bush. When the long flight of steps was reached, she rushed at them boldly. "Knock, Jerusalem," she commanded. The little woman tried to sound the clapper, then fell back exhausted. Georgina, enraged, seized it and thumped violently upon the plate. The sounds reverberated through the night, clashing against the bell-notes and the sound of the swaying elms. Jonathan and his daughters sprang from their seats. The Santa Cruz invoices slipped to the floor and fluttered after the wool balls like merchants aspiring to new possessions. What cared the horn of plenty on the door for the profits of the Fleet Sally? It had watched the ebb and flow of lordlier fortunes. "That ear-splitting bell hubbub--and now visitors," said the master, advancing to his offspring as if they were the cause of this new annoyance. Juma, already half-drunk with dreams, rubbed his dazed head and hastened toward the entry. Was Toussaint calling him? Did the chair of Marie du Buc de Marcinelle, the Elizabethtown beauty, pause before the hair-dresser's sign? Then time and place came back. Realizing that he was watched, he drew the great bolt with a show of strength, and in bounded the gale-blown humanity. "You?" queried the head of the Knickerbockers. That was the only greeting he gave his nearest relations on Easter eve. He glanced at Julie to see whether she secreted any packages about her person. Georgina, entering the room, her face stern and white, said, eyeing him, "Prepare yourself for a shock." He returned the challenge. Had she been tampering with her five-per-cents for Peruvian investments? Was it the old plaint--Jerusalem's frivolity? Why did the woman gaze at him so mournfully? "Prepare yourself," she continued, her voice rising to a shriek. "Patricia--your Patricia--has disgraced us!" [Illustration] The girl peering from the landing heard her name called. Her secret was known to the world and would soon be an implement of torture. The arbutus fell from her bodice unheeded. She could not meet that cruel group below!