"What is it, dearest?" cried her lover, in alarm.
"Wee Winnie! How can we face Wee Winnie?"
"There is no need to break the truth to her—we can simply get rid of her by telling her she has never been elected, and never will be."
"Why," said Lillie, with a comic moue, "that would be harder to tell her than the truth. But we must first of all tell father. I am afraid he will be dreadfully disappointed at missing that inaugural soirée after all. You know he has been staying in town expressly for it. We have some bad quarters of an hour before us."
They sought the millionaire in his sanctum but found him not. They inquired of Turple the magnificent, and learned that he was in the garden. As they turned away, the lovers both simultaneously remarked something peculiar about the face of Turple the magnificent. Moved by a common impulse, they turned back and gazed at it. For some seconds they could not at all grasp the change that had come over it—but at last, and almost at the same instant, they realized what was the matter.
Turple the magnificent was smiling.
Filled with strange apprehensions, Silverdale and Lillie hurried into the garden, where their vague alarm was exchanged for definite consternation. The millionaire was pacing the gravel-paths in the society of a strange and beautiful lady. On closer inspection, the lady turned out to be only too familiar.
"Why it's Wee Winnie masquerading as a woman!" exclaimed Lord Silverdale.
And so it proved—Nelly Nimrod in all the flush of her womanly beauty, her mannish attire discarded.
"Why, what is this, father?" murmured Lillie.