Mrs. De Peyster felt herself choking.  She had to get out of the room, or die.

Just then Jack walked back in.  For a few moments she had forgotten Jack.  The terror arising from the menace upstairs returned to her.  But Jack’s happy face was assurance that as yet he knew nothing of the second Matilda.

Yes, she had to get out, or die.  And Jack’s reappearance gave her frantic mind a cue for an unbetraying exit.

“I’ll go to the kitchen—­and start supper,” she gulped, and hurried into the butler’s pantry.

“Jack,” she heard Mary’s perplexed voice, “Matilda, somehow, seems rather queer to me.”

“She doesn’t seem quite herself,” agreed Jack.

Mrs. De Peyster sank into a chair beside the door, and sat there motionless, hardly daring to breathe—­shattered by the narrowness of her escape, and appalled by this new situation that had risen around her—­too appalled even to consider what might be the situation’s natural developments.  Soon amid the wild churning of various emotions, anger began to rise, and outraged pride.  Such cool, dumbfounding impudence!

Then curiosity began to stir.  Instinct warned her, incoherently, for all her faculties were too demoralized to be articulate, that this was no place for her.  But those two persons in there—­her son, and this daughter-in-law who had burst out of a fair cloud upon her—­a daughter-in-law whom she would never recognize—­what were they doing?  Cautiously, ever so cautiously, she pushed open the pantry door till there was a slight crack giving into the other room.

Jack had his arms about Mary’s shoulders.

“Well, little lady,” she heard him ask with tremulous fondness—­the young fool!—­“What do you think of our honeymoon?”

“I think, sir, that it’s something scandalous!” (Not such an unpleasant voice—­but then!)

“U’m!  Has the fact occurred to you”—­very solemnly—­“that you haven’t kissed me since we have been in this room?”

“Was it written in the bond that I had to kiss you in every room?”

“No matter about the bond.  A kiss or a divorce.  Take your choice.”

“It isn’t worth divorcing you, since you may be too poor to pay alimony.  So”—­sighing and turning her face up to him.

(Sentimental idiots!)

“Mary”—­after a moment of clinging lips—­“you think you can really be happy with me?”

“I know I shall be, dear!”

“Even if things don’t go right between mother and me, and even if for a long time I shall be awfully, awfully poor?”

“It’s just you I care for, Jack,—­just you!”

Jack stared at her; then suddenly: 

“Do you know what I feel like?”

“No.”

“Like kissing you again.”

“Now don’t be—­”

“Mary!”

His voice was tremulous.  Slowly their lips came together; they embraced; then drew apart, and holding hands, stood gazing at each other.