"But--but why the uncertainty about when he was coming back? Father
and Barney thought he was due to get out yesterday."

"Just a mistake we all made about his release. His time was up this
afternoon."

"But you told Barney and my father you hadn't heard from him."

"I had heard," said the Duchess in her flat tone. "If they want to see
him they can see him to-morrow."

"When--when will he be here?"

"Any minute," said the Duchess.

Without a word Maggie whirled about and the next moment she was in her
room on the floor below. She did not know what prompted her, but she
had a frantic desire to get out of this plain shirt-waist and skirt
and into something that would be striking. She considered her scanty
wardrobe; her father had recently spoken of handsome gowns and
furnishings, but as yet these existed only in his words, and the
pseudo-evening gowns which she had worn to restaurant dances with
Barney she knew to be cheap and uneffective.

Suddenly she remembered the things Hunt had given her, or had loaned
her, the evening four months earlier when he had taken her to an
artists' masquerade ball--though to her it had been a bitter
disappointment when Hunt had carried her away before the unmasking at
twelve o'clock. She tore off the offending waist and skirt, pulled
from beneath the bed the pasteboard box containing her costume; and in