and, turning, disappeared phantomlike up the stairs.
Knowleton stood silent a moment and finally with a look of dogged determination took her hand and led her toward a room that opened off the hall at the back. The yellow light fell through the door after them and she found herself in a dark wide chamber where she could just distinguish on the walls great square shapes which she took to be frames. Knowleton pressed a button, and immediately forty portraits sprang into life—old gallants from colonial days, ladies with floppity Gainsborough hats, fat women with ruffs and placid clasped hands.
She turned to Knowleton inquiringly, but he led her forward to a row of pictures on the side.
“Myra,” he said slowly and painfully, “there’s something I have to tell you. These”—he indicated the pictures with his hand—“are family portraits.”
There were seven of them, three men and three women, all of them of the period just before the Civil War. The one in the middle, however, was hidden by crimson velvet curtains.
“Ironic as it may seem,” continued Knowleton steadily, “that frame contains a picture of my great-grandmother.”
Reaching out, he pulled a little silken cord and the curtains parted, to expose a portrait of a lady dressed as a European but with the unmistakable features of a Chinese.
“My great-grandfather, you see, was an Australian tea importer. He met his future wife in Hong-Kong.”
Myra’s brain was whirling. She had a sudden vision of Mr. Whitney’s yellowish face, peculiar eyebrows and tiny hands and feet—she remembered ghastly tales she had heard of reversions to type—of Chinese babies—and then with a final surge of horror she thought of that sudden hushed cry in the night. She gasped, her knees seemed to crumple up and she sank slowly to the floor.
In a second Knowleton’s arms were round her.
“Dearest, dearest!” he cried. “I shouldn’t have told you! I shouldn’t have told you!”
As he said this Myra knew definitely and unmistakably that she could never marry him, and when she realized it she cast at him a wild pitiful look, and for the first time in her life fainted dead away.
IV
When she next recovered full consciousness she was in bed. She imagined a maid had undressed her, for on turning up the reading lamp she saw that her clothes had been neatly put away. For a minute she lay there, listening idly while the hall clock struck two, and then her overwrought nerves jumped in terror as she heard again that child’s cry from the room next door. The morning seemed suddenly infinitely far away. There was some shadowy secret near her—her feverish imagination pictured a Chinese child brought up there in the half-dark.
In a quick panic she crept into a negligee and, throwing open the door, slipped down the corridor toward Knowleton’s room. It was very dark in the other wing, but when she pushed open his door she could see by the faint hall light that his bed was empty and had not been slept in. Her terror increased. What could take him out at this hour of the night? She started for Mrs. Whitney’s room, but at the thought of the dogs and her bare ankles she gave a little discouraged cry and passed by the door.
Then she suddenly heard the sound of Knowleton’s voice issuing from a faint crack of light far down the corridor, and with a glow of joy she fled toward it. When she was within a foot of the door she found she could see through the crack—and after one glance all thought of entering left her.
Before an open fire, his head bowed in an attitude of great dejection, stood Knowleton, and in the corner, feet perched on the table, sat Mr. Whitney in his shirt sleeves, very quiet and calm, and pulling contentedly on a huge black pipe. Seated on the table was a part of Mrs. Whitney—that is, Mrs. Whitney without any hair. Out of the familiar great bust projected Mrs. Whitney’s head, but she was bald; on her cheeks was the faint stubble of a beard, and in her mouth was a large black cigar, which she was puffing with obvious enjoyment.
“A thousand,” groaned Knowleton as if in answer to a question. “Say twenty-five hundred and you’ll be nearer the truth. I got a bill from the Graham Kennels today for those poodle dogs. They’re soaking me two hundred and saying that they’ve got to have ’em back tomorrow.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Whitney in a low barytone voice, “send ’em back. We’re through with ’em.”
“That’s a mere item,” continued Knowleton glumly. “Including your salary, and Appleton’s here, and that fellow who did the chauffeur, and seventy supes for two nights, and an orchestra—that’s nearly twelve hundred, and then there’s the rent on the costumes and that darn Chinese portrait and the bribes to the servants. Lord! There’ll probably be bills for one thing or another coming in for the next month.”
“Well, then,” said Appleton, “for pity’s sake pull yourself together and carry it through to the end. Take my word for it, that girl will be out of the house by twelve noon.”
Knowleton sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands.
“Oh——”
“Brace up! It’s all over. I thought for a minute there in the hall that you were going to balk at that Chinese business.”
“It was the vaudeville that knocked the spots out of me,” groaned Knowleton. “It was about the meanest trick ever pulled on any girl, and she was so darned game about it!”
“She had to be,” said Mrs. Whitney cynically.
“Oh, Kelly, if you could have seen the girl look at me tonight just before she fainted in front of that picture. Lord, I believe she loves me! Oh, if you could have seen her!”
Outside Myra flushed crimson. She leaned closer to the door, biting her lip until she could taste the faintly bitter savor of blood.
“If there was anything I could do now,” continued Knowleton—“anything in the world that would smooth it over I believe I’d do it.”
Kelly crossed ponderously over, his bald shiny head ludicrous above his feminine negligee, and put his hand on Knowleton’s shoulder.
“See here, my boy—your trouble is just nerves. Look at it this way: You undertook somep’n to get yourself out of an awful mess. It’s a cinch the girl was after your money—now you’ve beat her at her own game an’ saved yourself an unhappy marriage and your family a lot of suffering. Ain’t that so, Appleton?”
“Absolutely!” said Appleton emphatically. “Go through with it.”
“Well,” said Knowleton with a dismal attempt to be righteous, “if she really loved me she wouldn’t have let it all affect her this much. She’s not marrying my family.”
Appleton laughed.
“I thought we’d tried to make it pretty obvious that she is.”
“Oh, shut up!” cried Knowleton miserably.
Myra saw Appleton wink at Kelly.
“’At’s right,” he said; “she’s shown she was after your money. Well, now then, there’s no reason for not going through with it. See here. On one side you’ve proved she didn’t love you and you’re rid of her and free as air. She’ll creep away and
