“Write! advertise!” Sybilla Silver repeated, with unspeakable mournfulness; “from whence, Sir Everard?”

“From here,” answered the baronet, decidedly.  “You shall not leave here until you find your friends.  And you shall not wear this odious disguise an hour longer.  Go back to your chamber and wait.”

“What an egregious muff he is!” she said to herself, contemptuously.  “There is no cleverness in fooling such an imbecile as that.  I am going on velvet so far; I only hope my lady may be as easily dealt with as my lady’s only son.”

My lady’s only son went straight to a door down the corridor, quite at the other extremity, and opened it.

It was a lady’s dressing-room evidently.  Laid out, all ready for wear, was a lady’s morning toilet complete, and without more ado Sir Everard confiscated the whole concern.  At the white cashmere robe alone he caviled.

“This is too gay; I must find a more sober garment.  All the maid-servants in the house would recognize this immediately.”

He went to one of the closets, searched there, and presently reappeared with a black silk dress.  Rolling all up in a heap, he started at once with his prize, laughing inwardly at the figure he cut.

“If Lady Louise saw me now, or my lady mother, either, for that matter!  What will Mildred and her maid say, I wonder, when they find burglars have been at work, and her matutinal toilet stolen?”

He bore the bundle straight to the chamber of his pretty runaway, and tapped at the door.  It was discreetly opened an inch or two.

“Here are some clothes.  When you are dressed, come out.  I will wait in the passage.”

“Thank yon,” Miss Silver’s soft voice said.

The young person whose adventures were so highly sensational doffed her velveteens and donned the dainty garments of Miss Mildred Kingsland.

All the things were beautifully made and embroidered, marked with the initials “M.  K.,” and adorned with the Kingsland crest.

“Miss Mildred Kingsland must be tall and slender, since her dress fits me so well.  Ah, what a change even a black silk dress makes in one’s appearance!  He admired me—­I saw he did, in jacket and pantiloons—­what will be do, then, in this?  Will he fall in love with me, I wonder?”

One parting peep in the glass, and she opened the door and stepped out before Sir Everard Kingsland, a dazzling vision of beauty.

He stood and gazed.  Could he believe his eyes?  Was this superb-looking woman with the flowing curls, the dark, bright beauty and imperial mien, the lad in velveteen who had shot the poacher last night?  Why, Cleopatra might have looked like that, in the height of her regal splendor, or Queen Semiramis, in the glorious days that were gone.

“This is indeed a transformation,” he said, coming forward.  “Your disguise was perfect.  I should never have known you for the youth I parted from ten minutes ago.”