"If that is true," she flashed back, "he took it to be mended for her."
"The circumstances do not seem to point that way," he said mildly. "Really, Maud, it's the deuce of a mix-up, and I'm simply trying to prepare you for the worst. You know those English people, the Nasmyths, in draggled tweeds and velveteens; the mother wears an India shawl, and the daughter a hat which looks as if it were made of carpet. Well, they were at the Hewstons' to luncheon to-day and they had just come from Eugene Gresham's studio where they had been pottering about the best part of the morning, although Alice Wilstead said their boots and their faces looked as if they had been chasing over plowed fields. Well, they were yelping about Gresham like all other women, and raving about the beautiful things he had, and Mrs. Nasmyth told how she got to poking about on a table and found your friend's amulet; and she, of course, made an awful scream about it, and Gresham, who, she naïvely remarked, didn't seem any too pleased at her discovery, explained that it was a good-luck charm, of very ancient workmanship, which had been given to him by a dear friend, and then he gently and firmly locked it up before her eyes in a little cabinet."
"Horrid creature!" murmured Maud.
"Who?" said Wallace eagerly. "You can't possibly mean Gresham, do you, Maud? What!" his tones expressed a wondering delight as she mutely but emphatically nodded her head. "To hear a woman speak thus of that hero of romance! Never has such a grateful sound saluted my ears. Never! Maud, I am really afraid I am going to hug you."
"You are going to do nothing of the kind." She could not help laughing, although she was seriously worried.
"Well, we'll waive it for the present," he conceded, again sinking languidly back in his chair, "but that isn't the worst. I told you that it was the deuce of a mix-up, and so it is. To continue now on page eight hundred and ninety-nine, the Nasmyths babbled all this out at luncheon, and old Hewston got perfectly apoplectic. He swelled up and became purple and emitted the most dreadful snorts and whiffles, and grunts and groans, until finally just as his wife and Alice Wilstead thought he was going to fall down in a fit, he got up and puffed away from the table, and Alice and Mrs. Hewston rushed after him, leaving the poor Nasmyths to take care of themselves. And not one thing could those two women do with him. You know what an obstinate, pig-headed, meddlesome old thing he is—and his head was set on jumping into his car and off to tell Hepworth as quickly as possible and, my dear Maud, that is what he did. Alice Wilstead said that she and Mrs. Hewston hung on to his coat-tails up to the very moment he entered the car, begging, praying, beseeching, imploring. She said he dragged them all the way across the sidewalk and literally kicked himself free from them." Martin threw back his head in a great burst of laughter in which Maud very feebly joined.
"I wish I'd been there," she said regretfully. "He'd only have got in that motor over my dead body; but, Wallace, when did you hear all this?"
"I met Alice Wilstead limping up the avenue, on her way home, and she told me about it."
"I wish—" began Maud, but she was interrupted by a summons to the telephone. When she returned to the room a few moments later, her face was graver than ever.
"I'll have to leave you, Wallace," she said. "You can stay here with the cat and the fire and the tea-kettle if you want to. Perhaps mother will come in, but Dita wishes me to come to her at once."