As the door closed, Kirkwood swung impulsively to Brentwick, with the brief, uneven laugh of fine-drawn nerves.

"Good God, sir!" he cried. "You don't know—"

"I can surmise," interrupted the elder man shrewdly.

"You turned up in the nick of time, for all the world like—"

"Harlequin popping through a stage trap?"

"No!—an incarnation of the Providence that watches over children and fools."

Brentwick dropped a calming hand upon his shoulder. "Your simile seems singularly happy, Philip. Permit me to suggest that you join the child in my study." He laughed quietly, with a slight nod toward an open door at the end of the hallway. "For myself, I'll be with you in one moment."

A faint, indulgent smile lurking in the shadow of his white mustache, he watched the young man wheel and dart through the doorway. "Young hearts!" he commented inaudibly—and a trace sadly. "Youth!..."

Beyond the threshold of the study, Kirkwood paused, eager eyes searching its somber shadows for a sign of Dorothy.

A long room and deep, it was lighted only by the circumscribed disk of illumination thrown on the central desk by a shaded reading-lamp, and the flickering glow of a grate-fire set beneath the mantel of a side-wall. At the back, heavy velvet portières cloaked the recesses of two long windows, closed jealously even against the twilight. Aside from the windows, doors and chimney-piece, every foot of wall space was occupied by towering bookcases or by shelves crowded to the limit of their capacity with an amazing miscellany of objects of art, the fruit of years of patient and discriminating collecting. An exotic and heady atmosphere, compounded of the faint and intangible exhalations of these insentient things, fragrance of sandalwood, myrrh and musk, reminiscent whiffs of half-forgotten incense, seemed to intensify the impression of gloomy richness and repose...

By the fireplace, a little to one side, stood Dorothy, one small foot resting on the brass fender, her figure merging into the dusky background, her delicate beauty gaining an effect of elusive and ethereal mystery in the waning and waxing ruddy glow upflung from the bedded coals.

"Oh, Philip!" She turned swiftly to Kirkwood with extended hands and a low, broken cry. "I'm so glad...."

A trace of hysteria in her manner warned him, and he checked himself upon the verge of a too dangerous tenderness. "There!" he said soothingly, letting her hands rest gently in his palms while he led her to a chair. "We can make ourselves easy now." She sat down and he released her hands with a reluctance less evident than actual. "If ever I say another word against my luck—"

"Who," inquired the girl, lowering her voice, "who is the gentleman in the flowered dressing-gown?"

"Brentwick—George Silvester Brentwick: an old friend. I've known him for years,—ever since I came abroad. Curiously enough, however, this is the first time I've ever been here. I called once, but he wasn't in,—a few days ago,—the day we met. I thought the place looked familiar. Stupid of me!"

"Philip," said the girl with a grave face but a shaking voice, "it was." She laughed provokingly.... "It was so funny, Philip. I don't know why I ran, when you told me to, but I did; and while I ran, I was conscious of the front door, here, opening, and this tall man in the flowered dressing-gown coming down to the gate as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world for him to stroll out, dressed that way, in the evening. And he opened the gate, and bowed, and said, ever so pleasantly, 'Won't you come in, Miss Calendar?'—"

"He did!" exclaimed Kirkwood. "But how—?"

"How can I say?" she expostulated. "At all events, he seemed to know me; and when he added something about calling you in, too—he said 'Mr. Kirkwood '—I didn't hesitate."

"It's strange enough, surely—and fortunate. Bless his heart!" said Kirkwood.

And, "Hum!" said Mr. Brentwick considerately, entering the study. He had discarded the dressing-gown and was now in evening dress.

The girl rose. Kirkwood turned. "Mr. Brentwick—" he began.

But Brentwick begged his patience with an eloquent gesture. "Sir," he said, somewhat austerely, "permit me to put a single question: Have you by any chance paid your cabby?"

"Why—" faltered the younger man, with a flaming face. "I—why, no—that is—"

The other quietly put his hand upon a bell-pull. A faint jingling sound was at once audible, emanating from the basement.

"How much should you say you owe him?"

"I—I haven't a penny in the world!"

The shrewd eyes flashed their amusement into Kirkwood's. "Tut, tut!" Brentwick chuckled. "Between gentlemen, my dear boy! Dear me! you are slow to learn."

"I'll never be contented to sponge on my friends," explained Kirkwood in deepest misery. "I can't tell when—"

"Tut, tut! How much did you say?"

"Ten shillings—or say twelve, would be about right," stammered the American, swayed by conflicting emotions of gratitude and profound embarrassment.

A soft-footed butler, impassive as Fate, materialized mysteriously in the doorway.

"You rang, sir?" he interrupted frigidly.

"I rang, Wotton." His master selected a sovereign from his purse and handed it to the servant. "For the cabby, Wotton."

"Yes sir." The butler swung automatically, on one heel.

"And Wotton!"

"Sir?"

"If any one should ask for me, I'm not at home."

"Very good, sir."

"And if you should see a pair of disreputable scoundrels skulking, in the neighborhood, one short and stout, the other tall and evidently a seafaring man, let me know."

"Thank you, sir." A moment later the front door was heard to close.

Brentwick turned with a little bow to the girl. "My dear Miss Calendar," he said, rubbing his thin, fine hands,—"I am old enough, I trust, to call you such without offense,—please be seated."

Complying, the girl rewarded him with a radiant smile. Whereupon, striding to the fireplace, their host turned his back to it, clasped his hands behind him, and glowered benignly upon the two. "Ah!" he observed in accents of extreme personal satisfaction. "Romance! Romance!"

"Would you mind telling us how you knew—" began Kirkwood anxiously.

"Not in the least, my dear Philip. It is simple enough: I possess an imagination. From my bedroom window, on the floor above, I happen to behold two cabs racing down the street, the one doggedly pursuing the other. The foremost stops, perforce of a fagged horse. There alights a young gentleman looking, if you'll pardon me, uncommonly seedy; he is followed by a young lady, if she will pardon me," with another little bow, "uncommonly pretty. With these two old eyes I observe that the gentleman does not pay his cabby. Ergo—I intelligently deduce—he is short of money. Eh?"

"You were right," affirmed Kirkwood, with a rueful and crooked smile. "But—"

"So! so!" pursued Brentwick, rising on his toes and dropping back again; "so this world of ours wags on to the old, old tune!... And I, who in my younger days pursued adventure without success, in dotage find myself dragged into a romance by my two ears, whether I will or no! Eh? And now you are going to tell me all about it, Philip. There is a chair.... Well, Wotton?"

The butler had again appeared noiselessly in the doorway.

"Beg pardon, sir; they're waiting, sir."

"The caitiffs, Wotton?"

"Yessir."

"Where waiting?"

"One at each end of the street, sir."

"Thank you. You may bring us sherry and biscuit, Wotton."

"Thank you, sir."

The servant vanished.

Brentwick removed his glasses, rubbed them, and blinked thoughtfully at the girl. "My dear," he said suddenly, with a peculiar tremor in his voice, "you resemble your mother remarkably. Tut—I should know! Time was when I was one of her most ardent admirers."

"You—y-you knew my mother?" cried Dorothy, profoundly moved.

"Did I not know you at sight? My dear, you are your mother reincarnate, for the good of an unworthy world. She was a very beautiful woman, my dear."

Wotton entered with a silver serving tray, offering it in turn to Dorothy, Kirkwood and his employer. While he was present the three held silent—the girl trembling slightly, but with her face aglow; Kirkwood half stupefied between his ease from care and his growing astonishment, as Brentwick continued to reveal unexpected phases of his personality; Brentwick himself outwardly imperturbable and complacent, for all that his hand shook as he lifted his wine glass.

"You may go, Wotton—or, wait. Don't you feel the need of a breath of fresh air, Wotton?"

"Yessir, thank you, sir."

"Then change your coat, Wotton, light your pipe, and stroll out for half an hour. You need not leave the street, but if either the tall thin blackguard with the seafaring habit, or the short stout rascal with the air of mystery should accost you, treat them with all courtesy, Wotton. You will be careful not to tell either of them anything in particular, although I don't mind your telling them that Mr. Brentwick lives here, if they ask. I am mostly concerned to discover if they purpose becoming fixtures on the street-corners, Wotton."

"Quite so, sir."

"Now you may go.... Wotton," continued his employer as the butler took himself off as softly as a cat, "grows daily a more valuable mechanism. He is by no means human in any respect, but I find him extremely handy to have round the house.... And now, my dear," turning to Dorothy, "with your permission I desire to drink to the memory of your beautiful mother and to the happiness of her beautiful daughter."

"But you will tell me—"

"A number of interesting things, Miss Calendar, if you'll be good enough to let me choose the time. I beg you to be patient with the idiosyncrasies of an old man, who means no harm, who has a reputation as an eccentric to sustain before his servants.... And now," said Brentwick, setting aside his glass, "now, my dear boy, for the adventure."

Kirkwood chuckled, infected by his host's genial humor. "How do you know—"

"How can it be otherwise?" countered Brentwick with a trace of asperity. "Am I to be denied my adventure? Sir, I refuse without equivocation. Your very bearing breathes of Romance. There must be an adventure forthcoming, Philip; otherwise my disappointment will be so acute that I shall be regretfully obliged seriously to consider my right, as a householder, to show you the door."

"But Mr. Brentwick—!"

"Sit down, sir!" commanded Brentwick with such a peremptory note that the young man, who had risen, obeyed out of sheer surprise. Upon which his host advanced, indicting him with a long white forefinger. "Would you, sir," he demanded, "again expose this little lady to the machinations of that corpulent scoundrel, whom I have just had the pleasure of shooing off my premises, because you choose to resent an old man's raillery?"

"I apologize," Kirkwood humored him.

"I accept the apology in the spirit in which it is offered.... I repeat, now for the adventure, Philip. If the story's long, epitomize. We can consider details more at our leisure."

Kirkwood's eyes consulted the girl's face; almost imperceptibly she nodded him permission to proceed.

"Briefly, then," he began haltingly, "the man who followed us to the door here, is Miss Calendar's father."

"Oh? His name, please?"

"George Burgoyne Calendar."

"Ah! An American; I remember, now. Continue, please."

"He is hounding us, sir, with the intention of stealing some property, which he caused to be stolen, which we—to put it bluntly—stole from him, to which he has no shadow of a title, and which, finally, we're endeavoring to return to its owners."

"My dear!" interpolated Brent............