“Matilda!” she shiveringingly ejaculated.  “I didn’t know there was anything like it in the world!”

“I know, ma’am, that it’s not fit for you,” grieved Matilda.  “But—­it’s better than nothing.”

“And that thing there!” pointing a shaking finger at the abnormal coffin.  “What’s that?”

“That’s your bed, ma’am.”

“My bed!”

“It lets down, ma’am.  Like this.”

Whereupon Matilda proceeded to let down that sine qua non of a profitable boarding-house, while Mrs. De Peyster, dismayed, looked for the first time in her life upon the miracle of the unfolding of a folding-bed.  Her mistress’s slumber prepared for Matilda then softened the inaccuracies of the couch’s surface for her own more humble repose.

Neither felt like talking; there was too much to talk about.  So soon both were in their beds, the lights out.  Mrs. De Peyster lay dazed upon this strange bed that operated like a lorgnette:  tremulously existing, awake, yet hardly capable of coherent thought.

For a space she heard Matilda toss about, draw long, tremulous breaths; then from the couch of that elderly virgin sounded the incontrovertible tocsin of deep sleep.  But for Mrs. De Peyster there was no sleep; not yet.

She now was thinking; casting up accounts.  Exactly twenty-four hours since, she had officially sailed.  Jack and that Mary person were now in sweet and undisturbed possession of her house; Olivetta, on board the Plutonia, was this minute reposing at ease amid the luxuries of her cabin de luxe; and she, herself, Mrs. De Peyster, was lying on a folding-bed, a most knobby bed,—­the man who invented cobblestone paving must have got his idea from such a bed as this,—­in a boarding-house the like of which till this night she had never imagined to exist.

And only twenty-four hours!...

She stared up toward where, in the dark, the corpulent Cupids were dancing their aerial May-ring ... and stared ... and stared....

CHAPTER X

PEACE—­OF A SORT

The next morning there was a long, whispered discussion as to whether Mrs. De Peyster should go down to breakfast or have all her meals sent up to this chamber of distempered green.  In the end two considerations decided the matter.  In the first place, meals sent to the room would undoubtedly be charged extra.  In the second, it was possible that Mrs. De Peyster’s remaining in her room might rouse suspicion.  It seemed the cheaper and safer course to try to merge herself, an unnoticed figure, in the routine of the house.

The dining-room was low-ceilinged and occupied the front basement and seemed to be ventilated solely through the kitchen.  Mrs. De Peyster hazily saw perhaps a dozen people; from among whom a bare arm, slipping from the sleeve of a pink silk wrapper, languidly waved toward a small table.  Into the two chairs Mrs. Gilbert indicated the twain sank.