him, should be unable to satisfy himself of his respectability, he was going straight on to Scotland Yard to impart his suspicions to the authorities. Sybil sketched the carrying out of this amazing programme and its probable consequences with much animation and ridicule, but her hearer’s interest tailed off into undisguised indifference, ending in a deliberate yawn.
“What a very stupid affair!” Mrs. Talmage Eglinton murmured. “Do you know, it has made me quite sleepy, and—and I think I’ll go to bed. I have started a real, clawing, hammering headache. Shouldn’t wonder if I am not laid up to-morrow.”
Nodding a good-night to the others, she rose and swept from the room, followed by Sybil, who, profusely sympathetic, insisted on accompanying her to her own apartments. At the door of the latter a dark-eyed, slender woman, in a black dress with broad white collar and cuffs, was standing. This was Rosa, the French maid, on whose services Mrs. Talmage Eglinton professed herself entirely dependent.
“One of my headaches, Rosa. The pink draught—quickly!” cried the incipient invalid, and pausing on the threshold she bade an af-
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