"Oh! Oh!" wailed Mrs. Peter V. as her eye rested on the headlines. "The Tri-State has gone up! This is the end—the end of everything! Here, Leslie, you take this paper, and I'll take that—we'll see whether there isn't something in them about me."
On the floor below, no sooner had Leslie left the Den than there was a rustle behind the heavy curtains, in that room, and presently they were parted, and then, with a stealthy movement a woman stepped forth into the middle of the room.
Madeline Braine looked carefully about her, listened for an instant, and then advanced still further toward the door. Her attitude was watchfulness itself.
"His daughter Elinor, a girl who needs protection!" she cried, with an agitation born of fresh events, and then a half-sob broke from her lips. "There are other girls who should have had care just as much—and haven't had it."
She glanced at her watch and started forward once again.
"I can't wait!" she cried. "Why isn't Peter Wilkinson here?"
For a moment it occurred to her to cross the hall to the reception-room, and from there to summon a servant and give him a message. She had had her own reasons, in the first instance, for darting into Wilkinson's Den to hide. She well knew that her agreement with Wilkinson forbade her to cross his threshold; but she intended to make a crisis in her affairs as an excuse to him, and quite naturally decided that there would be much less danger in the Den of her being discovered by others than in the reception-room. Now, there were reasons why she must not be found within this room: the interview between Ilingsworth and Leslie Wilkinson made it impossible. And she started to leave, but suddenly drew back.
"Somebody's coming," she whispered to herself. And scarcely had she retreated once more behind the concealing curtains of the Den when Jeffries entered with an armful of the latest extras and laid them down upon the desk. After that, he passed out, but events happened with such unusual rapidity that Madeline Braine found herself again caught like a rat in a trap behind the heavy curtains in the room.
"It's just as well," she assured herself, as she waited there, every minute expecting to get a chance to escape; but as it turned out, it was not just as well for her.
Alone at last in the silence and solitude of her own apartments at the top of the house, Leslie sat for some moments on the window-seat, gazing out over the Hudson at the misty, dusky shore across the way.