with a fresh one. Then she took down her hair and rearranged it,
rapidly but with care. It was a simple matter to change her slippers
for walking-boots, and to find her hat and coat and gloves in their
old places. Miss Manuel, the nurse, _was_ reliable, she told herself
again as she put them on, feeling a moment's gratitude to the woman
for trying to keep her "up," even during her "absences," to something
approaching the standard a gentlewoman's birth and breeding demanded.
Her money, or at least a large part of it, for she did not stop to
count it, she found in the despatch-box where she had put it on their
arrival in New York, and the key was with others on a ring in the
private drawer of her writing-desk. Hurriedly she selected several
large bills and put them into a silver purse, pressing it deep into
the pocket of her walking-skirt with some vague fear that she might
lose it. Then she replaced the box and locked the desk, dropping the
key in her pocket. Her movements were extraordinarily swift and
noiseless. In twenty minutes from the time she had looked in on the
nurse she was ready for the street.

A second glance into the inner room showed her that Miss Manuel was
still sleeping. She regarded her distrustfully for an instant, and on
a sudden impulse sat down at her desk and wrote a message on a sheet
of the hotel paper.

"I am going out for the day. _I will return to-night._ Do nothing,
consult no one. I am quite able to take care of myself. Don't make a
sensation for the newspapers! ALICE STANSBURY."

"That last sentence will quiet her," she reflected, with cool
satisfaction, as she pinned the note to the side of the mirror. "She
won't care to advertise far and wide that she has temporarily mislaid