At the head of Union Square they caught a roving taxicab.  Their next thought, after bare escape, was necessarily concerned with shelter, a hiding-place.  To the chauffeur’s “Where to, ladies?” Mrs. De Peyster said, “Hotel Dauphin.”  The instinct, the Mrs. De Peyster of habit, which was beneath her surface of agitation, said the Dauphin because the Dauphin was quite the most select hotel in New York.  In fact, six months before, when Mrs. De Peyster desired to introduce and honor the Duke de Crecy in a larger way than her residence permitted, it was at the Dauphin that she had elected to give the ball that had brought her so much deferential praise—­which occasion was the first and only time she had departed from her strict old-family practice of limiting her social functions to such as could be accommodated within her own house.  She had then been distinctly pleased; one could hardly have expected good breeding upon so large a scale.  And her present subconscious impression of the Dauphin was that it was ducal, if not regal, in its reserved splendor, in its manner of subdued, punctilious ceremony.

She could remain at the Dauphin, in seclusion, until she had time to think.  Then she could act.

As she sped smoothly up Fifth Avenue—­her second ride on the Avenue that night—­she began, in the cushioned privacy of the taxi, to recover somewhat from the panic of dire necessity that had driven them forth.  Other matters began to flash spasmodically across the screen of her mind.  One of these was William.  And there the film stopped.  The cold, withering look William had given Matilda a few minutes before remained fixed upon the screen.  That look threatened her most unpleasantly as to the future.  What if William should learn who was the real Matilda to whom he had made love!

“Matilda,” she began, calling up her dignity, “I desire to instruct you upon a certain matter.”

“Yes, ma’am,” whispered Matilda.

“I expressly instruct you not to mention or hint to any one, particularly William, that it was I and not you who went out driving with him to-night.”

“I’ll not, ma’am.”

“You swear?”

“I swear, ma’am.  Never!”

“Remember, Matilda.  You have sworn.”  And relieved of that menace, she leaned back.

The taxi drew up before the Dauphin.  A grenadier-lackey, who seemed bulk and brass buttons and braid of gold, handed them out with august white gloves.

“Pay the fare, Matilda,” ordered Mrs. De Peyster.

Mrs. De Peyster’s bills, when she had a servant with her, were always paid by the attendant.  Matilda did so, out of a square black leather bag that was never out of Matilda’s fingers when Matilda was out of the house; it seemed almost a flattened extension of Matilda’s hand.

They entered the Dauphin, passing other white-gloved lackeys, each a separate perfection of punctiliousness; and passed through a marble hallway, muted with rugs of the Orient, and came into a vast high chamber, large as a theater—­marble walls and ceiling, tapestries, moulded plaster and gilt in moderation, silken ropes instead of handrails on the stairways, electric lights so shaded that each looked a huge but softly unobtrusive pearl.  The chamber was pervaded by, was dedicated to, splendid repose.