"Buttonhole him!" echoed the astonished Flomerfelt. "Don't you mean throttle him?"
"Buttonhole him," repeated Wilkinson savagely, "and then tell him all about the girl he loves—and me."
A few days later, alone in a bare, hall-bedroom, on the east side of the big city, Madeline Braine sat staring, with eyes that saw not, into the gloom without. Well might she reflect that nothing but a miracle could save her now; well might her reason totter at the thought of what life held for her in the future. The letter in her lap read:
" ... There's no use in my seeing you again. I take it from your silence that you prefer not to explain what I have learned about you—what I have proved to myself to be a fact—the truth of your relations with Peter V. Wilkinson. I start West to-night.
"Yours,
"H. T."
V
In Mrs. Pallet-Searing's house on Fifth Avenue was an authorised hiding-place intended, evidently, for no more than two persons, which was reached by a short journey through the interior flower-garden: an undignified plunge between some half-dozen palm-tubs, and a short ascent up a wide, circular staircase.
In this haven—known only to the initiated,—a week later, Eliot Beekman and Leslie Wilkinson had been sitting for some time.