His time was up this afternoon." "But you told Barney and my father you hadn't heard from him." "I had heard," said the Duchess in her flat tone.

"If they want to see him they can see him to-morrow." "When--when will he be here ?" "Any minute," said the Duchess.
Without a word Maggie whirled about and the next moment she was in her room on the floor below.

She did not know what prompted her, but she had a frantic desire to get out of this plain shirt-waist and skirt and into something that would be striking.

She considered her scanty wardrobe; her father had recently spoken of handsome gowns and furnishings, but as yet these existed only in his words, and the pseudo-evening gowns which she had worn to restaurant dances with Barney she knew to be cheap and uneffective.
Suddenly she remembered the things Hunt had given her, or had loaned her, the evening four months earlier when he had taken her to an artists' masquerade ball--though to her it had been a bitter disappointment when Hunt had carried her away before the unmasking at twelve o'clock.

She tore off the offending waist and skirt, pulled from beneath the bed the pasteboard box containing her costume; and in five minutes of flying hands the transformation was completed.