tumer's designs for Miss Dounay's coming London production.
As the actress had divined, the inspection of these fascinating details of stagecraft interested her guests as much as the display of them delighted her.
In the hour which ensued before the supper, a collation that in its variety and substance again proved how well the actress comprehended the appetite of the male, two or three guests arrived tardily. The earliest of these to enter was Rollo Charles Burbeck, who came in ample time to roam about the room of mystery at will with the remainder of the guests. Indeed, he stayed in it so much that its enchantment for him might have been presumed to be greater than for the others.
Before the supper, too, one of the guests craved the liberty of departing. This was the Reverend John Hampstead. The farewell of his hostess was gracious and without the slightest reminiscence of anything unpleasant, but he was prevented from more than mentally congratulating himself upon the change in her manner toward him by the fact that in walking some ten feet from where he touched the fingers of his hostess to where a butler-sort of person, borrowed from the hotel staff, stood waiting with his overcoat, Doctor Hampstead came face to face with Rollie Burbeck, who was just emerging from the boudoir-studio with a disturbed look upon his usually placid face, as if, for instance, he had seen a ghost.
In consequence, the minister moved down the corridor to the elevator, not pondering upon his own perplexities, but thinking to himself, "I wonder now if that young man is in any serious trouble. It would break his mother's heart—it would kill her if he were."
