Every one elaborately ignored my absence from dinner. The Dallas
Browns, Max and Lollie were at bridge; Jim was alone in the den,
walking the floor and biting at an unlighted cigar; Betty had
returned to Aunt Selina and was hysterical, they said, and
Flannigan was in deep dejection because I had missed my dinner.

"Betty is making no end of a row," Max said, looking up from his
game, "because the old lady upstairs insists on chloroform
liniment. Betty says the smell makes her ill."

"And she can inhale Russian cigarettes," Anne said enviously,
"and gasolene fumes, without turning a hair. I call a revoke,
Dal; you trumped spades on the second round."

Dal flung over three tricks with very bad grace, and Anne counted
them with maddening deliberation.

"Game and rubber," she said. "Watch Dal, Max; he will cheat in
the score if he can. Kit, don't have another clam while I am in
this house. I have eaten so many lately my waist rises and falls
with the tide."

"You have a stunning color, Kit," Lollie said. "You are really
quite superb. Who made that gown?"

"Where have you been hiding, du kleine?" Max whispered, under
cover of showing me the evening paper, with a photograph of the
house and a cross at the cellar window where we had tried to
escape. "If one day in the house with you, Kit, puts me in this