He passed no comment, however, but pocketed the book, scribbled a few lines on a sheet of paper bearing the name of the hotel, and intrusted coat and letter to an attendant.
Uncle Horace, after a momentary qualm, gave instructions to the head-waiter in the approved manner of a trust magnate.
"We're up against it now, Louisa," he whispered confidentially to his wife, "so let's have one wonderful night if we never have another." Mrs.Curtis nodded her complete agreement.

She would have sanctioned a mortgage on her home rather than forego any material part of an experience which would command the breathless attention of many a future gathering of matrons and maids in faraway Bloomington.
Lady Hermione received her visitors with a shy cordiality which won their prompt approval.

Aunt Louisa had been perplexed by indecision as to what she was to say or how she was to act when she met the bride, but one glance of her keen, motherly eyes at the blushing and timid girl resolved any doubts on both scores.
"God bless you, my dear!" she said, throwing her arms around Hermione's neck and kissing her heartily.

"Perhaps everything is for the best, and, anyway, you've married into a family of honest men and true women." "Ma'am," said Uncle Horace, when his turn came to be introduced, "strange as it may sound, I know less about my nephew than you yourself, but if he resembles his father in character as he does in appearance, you've chosen well, and let me add, ma'am, that _he_ seems to have made a first-rate selection at sight." Of course, such congratulations were woefully misplaced, but Hermione was too well-bred to reveal any cause for disquietude other than the normal embarrassment any young woman would display in like conditions.
Curtis, too, put in a quiet word which threw light on the situation.
"As I told you a few minutes since, I was not aware that my uncle and aunt were in New York," he said.

"I cannot even guess how they came to find me so opportunely, and we have hardly been able to say a word to each other yet, because they were in the thick of the police inquiry when I met them in my hotel." "Why, that's the easiest thing," declared Aunt Louisa, rejoicing in a long-looked-for opportunity to hear her own voice in full volume.
"This young gentleman here," and she nodded at the dismayed Devar, "told us that he cottoned to your husband, my dear, something remarkable on board the steamer, so he sent a message by wireless to the editor of a New York paper, asking him to let America know that one of her citizens who had won distinction in China was homeward bound, and the editor circulated a real nice paragraph about it.