"Oh, Mrs. Boyd, how can you ask me such an awful—"
"Well, then, I won't!" Ann said, more softly. "Besides, I can see the truth in your young face. The Almighty has put lights in the eyes of women that only one thing can put out. Yours are still burning."
Virginia rose to her feet and clutched Ann's strong arm convulsively.
"Oh, if you only knew why I came, you'd not have the heart to think me absolutely bad. Mrs. Boyd, as God is my Judge, I came because he—"
"You needn't bother to tell me anything about it," Ann grunted, with a shrug of her shoulders. "I know why you come; if I hadn't suspicioned the truth I'd have let you alone, but I ain't going to tell you why I come. I come, that's all. I come, and if we are going to get out of here without a scandal we've got to be slick about it. Those devils are still carousing down there. Let's go now while the parlor door is shut."
They had reached the threshold of the chamber when Virginia drew back suddenly.
"He told me not to dare to go that way!" she cried. "He said I'd be seen if I did. He locked me in, Mrs. Boyd—he locked the door!"
"I know that, too," Ann retorted, impatiently. "Didn't I have to turn the key to get in? But we've got to go this way. We've got to go down them steps like I come, and past the room where they are holding high carnival. We've got to chance it, but we must be quick about it. We haven't time to stand here talking."
She turned the carved brass knob and drew the shutter towards her. At the same instant she shrank back into Virginia's arms, for the drawing-room door was wrenched open, and Masters's voice rang out loudly in the great hall.
"We will see where he bunks, won't we, Dick? By George, the idea of an old college-chum refusing to let a man see his house! I want to look at the photographs you used to stick up on the walls, you sly dog! Oh, you've got them yet! You don't throw beauties like them away when they cost a dollar apiece."