Evening drew on.  Bed, and sitting noiseless in one spot, grew more wearisome.  And her stomach began to complain bitterly, for as has been remarked it was a pampered creature and had been long accustomed to being served sumptuously and with deferential promptitude.  But she realized that Matilda would not dare come, if she remembered to come at all, until the household was fast asleep.

Eight o’clock came.  She lit one of the candles and placed it, cautiously shaded, in a corner of her sitting-room....

Ten o’clock came.

She looked meditatively at the box of candles.  Perhaps the Esquimaux ate them with a kind of sauce.  They might not be so bad that way....

Midnight came.  Shortly thereafter a faint, ever so faint, knocking sent her tiptoeing—­for months she would dare move only on breathless tiptoe!—­to the door of her sitting-room, where she stood and listened.

Again the faint knocking sounded.

“Mrs. De Peyster, it’s Matilda,” whispered an agitated voice.

Mrs. De Peyster quickly unlocked and opened the door.  Matilda slipped in and the door was softly closed upon her back.

“Here’s some food—­just what I could grab in a second—­I didn’t dare take time to choose.”  Matilda held out a bundle wrapped in a newspaper.  “Take it, ma’am.  I don’t dare stay here a second.”

But Mrs. De Peyster caught her arm.

“How did they take my going?”

“Mr. Jack thought home was really the best place for my sister, if she was sick, ma’am.  And Mary was awfully kind and asked me all sorts of questions—­which—­which I found it awfully hard to answer, ma’am,—­and she is going to send you the book you didn’t finish.  And Mr. Pyecroft got me off into a corner and said, so we’d tried to give him the slip again.”

“What is he going to do?”

“He said he was safe here, under Judge Harvey’s protection.  Outside some detective might insist on arresting him, and perhaps things might take such a turn that even Judge Harvey might not be able to help him.  So he said he was going to stay on here till things blew over.  Oh, please, ma’am, let me go, for if they were to hear me—­”

A minute later the chattering Matilda was out of the room, the door was locked, and Mrs. De Peyster was sitting in a chair with the bundle of provisions on her exquisitely lacquered tea-table.  In the newspaper was a small loaf of bread, a tin of salmon, and a kitchen knife.  That was all.  Not even butter!  And, of course, no coffee—­she who liked coffee, strong, three times a day.  But when was she ever again to know the taste of coffee!

Never before had she sat face to face with such an uninteresting menu.  But she devoured it—­opening the tin of salmon after great effort with the knife—­devoured it every bit.  Then she noticed the newspaper in which the provisions had been wrapped.  It was part of that day’s, Sunday’s, “Record,” and it was the illustrated supplement.  This she unfolded, and before her eyes stood a big-lettered title, “Annual Exodus of Society Leaders,” and in the queenly place in the center of the page was her own portrait by M. Dubois.