“Quite near——­”

“You didn’t touch it, did you?”

“I was going to tell you——­”

“Did you?” he bellowed musically.  “Answer me, Sybilla!”

“Y-yes—­I did.”

“What did you suppose it to be?”

“I thought—­we all thought—­that you kept a wireless telephone instrument in there——­”

“Why?  Just because I happen to be president of the Amalgamated Wireless Trust Company?”

“Yes.  And we were dying to see a wireless telephone work....  I thought I’d like to call up Central—­just to be sure I could make the thing go—­ What is the matter, Pa-pah?”

He dropped into a wadded armchair and motioned Sybilla to a seat opposite.  Then with another frightful facial contortion he reimbedded the monocle.

“So you deliberately opened that door and went in to rummage?”

“No,” said the girl; “we were—­skylarking a little, on our way to the gymnasium; and I gave Brasilia a little shove toward the laboratory door, and then Flavilla pushed me—­very gently—­and somehow I—­the door flew open and my mask fell off and rolled inside; and I went in after it.  That is how it happened—­partly.”

She lifted her dark and very beautiful eyes to her stony parent, then they dropped, and she began tracing figures and arabesques on the polished floor with the point of her foil.  “That is partly how,” she repeated.

“What is the other part?”

“The other part was that, having unfortunately disobeyed you, and being already in the room, I thought I might as well stay and take a little peep around——­”

Her father fairly bounced in his padded chair.  The velvet-eyed descendant of Eve shot a fearful glance at him and continued, still casually tracing invisible arabesques with her foil’s point.

“You see, don’t you,” she said, “that being actually in, I thought I might as well do something before I came out again, which would make my disobedience worth the punishment.  So I first picked up my mask, then I took a scared peep around.  There were only jars and bottles and things....  I was dreadfully disappointed.  The certainty of being punished and then, after all, seeing nothing but bottles, did seem rather unfair....  So I—­walked around to—­to see if I could find something to look at which would repay me for the punishment....  There is a proverb, isn’t there Pa-pah?—­something about being executed for a lamb——­”

“Go on!” he said sharply.

“Well, all I could find that looked as though I had no business to touch it was a little jeweled machine——­”

“That was it!  Did you touch it?”

“Yes, several times.  Was it a wireless?”

“Never mind!  Yes, it’s one kind of a wireless instrument.  Go on!”

Sybilla shook her head: 

“I’m sure I don’t see why you are so disturbingly emphatic; because I haven’t an idea how to send or receive a wireless message, and I hadn’t the vaguest notion how that machine might work.  I tried very hard to make it go; I turned several screws and pushed all the push-buttons——­”