“Well, my lady!” Mrs. Maper dashed through the door, in her dinner-gown and diamonds, her forefinger hovering, balanced, between earth and heaven.  She saw nothing but an answering figure ribboned and jewelled, that dashed at her and pointed its forefinger menacingly.

The appearance of this figure as from behind the glass shut out from her mind the idea of another figure behind it.  The packed box, neat and new-labelled, the absence of the handbag and of any sign of occupancy, the open windows, the silence, all told their lying tale.

“The Hirish witch!” she screamed.

She ran from one window to the other seeking for a sign of the escaped or the escapade.  She was relieved to find no batter of brains and blood spoiling the green lawn.  How had the trick been done?  It did not even occur to her to look under the bed, so hypnotised was she by the sense of a flown bird.  Eileen almost betrayed herself by giggling, as at the real stage melodrama.

When Mrs. Maper ran downstairs to interrogate the servants—­eruption into the kitchen was one of her incurable habits—­Eileen slipped through the wide-flung door, down the staircase, and then, seeing the butler ahead, turned sharp off to the little-used part of the corridor and so into the library.  She made straight for the iron staircase to the grounds, and came face to face with Robert Maper.

Twilight was not his hour for the library—­she saw even through her perturbation that he was pacing it in fond memory.  His face lighted up with amazement, as though the dead had come up through a tombstone.

“Good-by!” she said, shifting her handbag to her left hand and holding out her right.  Her self-possession pleased her.

“What!” he cried.  And again he had the gasp of a fish out of water.

“Yes, I came to say good-by.”

“You are leaving us?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, and it is I that have driven you away!”

“No, no, don’t reproach yourself, please don’t.  Good-by.”

He gasped in silence.  She gave a little laugh.  “Now that I offer you my hand, it is you who won’t take it.”

He seized it.  “Oh, Eil—­Miss O’Keeffe—­let me keep it.”

“Please! we settled that.”

“It will never be settled till you are my wife.”

“Listen!” said Eileen, dramatically.  “In a few minutes your mother and father will be seated at dinner.  Your mother will have told your father I’ve left the house in disgrace.  Don’t interrupt.  Would you be prepared to walk in upon them with me on your arm and to say, ’Mother, father, Miss O’Keeffe has done me the honour of consenting to be my wife’?”

With her warm hand still in his, how could he hesitate?  “Oh, Eileen, if you’d only let me!”

The imagination of the tableau was only less tempting to Eileen.  It was procurable—­she had only to move her little finger, or rather not to move it.  But the very facility of production lessened the tableau’s temptingness.  The triumph was complete without the vulgar actuality.