She was possessed of a latch-key, rarely used: it had always irritated Adam--one of the few things that did--to find servants standing up so inhumanly straight when they came home, in the small hours, after parties.

"So I had but to slip in, each time, with my cab at the door, and make out for myself, without their knowing it, that Maggie was still there.

I came, I went--without their so much as dreaming.

What do they really suppose," she asked, "becomes of one ?--not so much sentimentally or morally, so to call it, and since that doesn't matter; but even just physically, materially, as a mere wandering woman: as a decent harmless wife, after all; as the best stepmother, after all, that really ever was; or at the least simply as a maitresse de maison not quite without a conscience.

They must even in their odd way," she declared, "have SOME idea." "Oh, they've a great deal of idea," said the Prince.