“But he so often told me I had the instincts of a thief—!”

“So often—­I know—­that you were, against your will and reason, by dint of the very iteration of it, coming to accept that lie as a truth whose power there was no contesting.  That is why, that you might prove yourself by your own acts, I had to let you undergo your ordeal here to-night, only standing by to make sure no ill came of it.  Otherwise you might have carried to your grave the fear instilled into your soul by that blackguard.  But now you know he lied, and will never doubt again—­or reproach your father for the dark record of his younger years.”

He checked, lifting hands of desolate appeal, then let them fall.

“Dear, if you knew you would not judge me harshly.  If only you could know what I have fought up from, a foundling without a name abandoned in a third-rate Parisian hotel, reared a scullion, butt and scapegoat, with associates only of the lowest, scullions, beggars, pickpockets, Apaches, and worse—!”

“As if that mattered!”

The girl turned a softly suffused face with shining eyes to Lanyard’s.  Now at last she knew him, now the romance of her dreams of yesterday came true:  through the mean masquerade of Nogam the man emerged, identifying himself in her sight unmistakably with that splendid stranger whom she had never quite forgotten since that old-time afternoon when he had met Karslake in the Cafe des Exiles and talked so intimately of his antecedents, hinting at a history of youthful years strangely analogous with her own.

Involuntarily her arms lifted and settled upon his shoulders.

“I am so proud to think—­”

A shrill scream drowned out her words, a woman’s voice ranging swiftly the staccato gamut of terror and cracking discordantly on its most piercing note.

Then with a bang that shook the flooring and must have been heard in the farthest corners of the house, the bedchamber door was slammed behind their backs.  But beyond it the screaming went on in volume imperceptibly muffled by its barrier, one ear-splitting caterwaul following another with such continuity that the wonder was where Lady Randolph West found breath to keep up that atrocious row, and whether any dozen women of average lung-power could have rivalled it.

In one sharp movement Lanyard and Sofia disengaged and fell apart, their eyes consulting, hers in dismay, his in mixed exasperation and remorse.

“I ought to be shot,” he declared, bitterly—­“who knew better!—­to have delayed here, exposing you to this danger—!”

“It couldn’t be helped,” Sofia insisted; “you had to make me understand.  Besides, if I hurry back—­”

In quick strides Lanyard crossed to the corridor door, unlatched and opened it an inch, peered out, and gave the sum of what he saw in a gesture of finality, then leaving the door ajar turned swiftly back to the girl.

“Too late,” he said:  “they’re swarming out into the hall like bees.  In another minute ...”