She rushed toward the entry, but he caught her and pushed her back.

“I tell you you must go back,” he repeated.

“It’s Dorothea!” she cried.  “She’s hurt!  She’s killed!  Let me go!  She needs me!”

“It isn’t Dorothea,” he whispered, forcing her over the threshold of her own room and trying to close the door upon her.

“Then what is it?” she begged.  “Tell me now.  You’re hurting me.  Let me go!  You’re killing me.”

“It’s—­”

But there was no need to say more, for the main door swung open again and the Marquis de Bienville entered, followed by a porter carrying his valise.

At his appearance Derek relinquished Diane’s hands, and Diane herself was so astonished that she stepped plainly into view.  Not less astonished than herself, Bienville stopped stock-still, looked at her, looked into the room behind her, looked at Derek with a long, half-amused, comprehending stare, lifted his hat gravely, and passed on.

When he had gone there was a minute of dead silence.  With parted lips and awe-stricken eyes Diane gazed after him till he had spoken to the clerk at the desk and passed on into the darker recesses of the hotel.  When she turned toward Derek he was smiling, with what she knew was an effort to treat the situation lightly.

“Well, this time we’ve given him something to talk about,” he laughed, bravely.

She shrugged her shoulders and spread apart her hands with one of her habitual, fatalistic gestures.

“I don’t mind.  He can’t do me more harm than he’s done already.  It’s not of him that I’m thinking, but of Dorothea.  She hasn’t come.”

“No, she hasn’t come.”

The fact had grown alarming, so much so as to make the incident of Bienville’s appearance seem in comparison a matter of little moment.  Diane remained on the threshold of her room, and Derek in the hail outside, while, for mutual encouragement, they rehearsed once more the list of predicaments in which the young people might have found themselves without serious danger.

Diane was about to withdraw, when a man ran down the hall calling: 

“The telephone!—­for the gentleman!”

Derek started on a run, Diane following more slowly.  When she reached the office Derek had the receiver to his ear and was talking.

“Yes, Fulton.  Go on.  I hear....  Who has rung you up?...  I didn’t catch ...  Miss—­who?  Oh, Miss Marion Grimston.  Yes?...  In Philadelphia, at the Hotel Belleville....  Yes; I understand... and Miss Dorothea is with her....  Good!...  Did she say how she got there?...  Will explain when we get back to New York to-morrow morning....  All right....  Yes, to lunch....  She said Miss Dorothea was quite well, and satisfied with her trip!...  That’s good....  Well, good-night, Fulton.  Sorry to have kept you up.”

He put up the receiver and turned to Diane.

“Did you understand?”