To the private apartment of Mr. Mavick, in the evening of the second eventful day, where, over his after-dinner cigar, he was amusing himself with a French novel, enters, after a little warning tap, the mistress of the house, for, what was a rare occurrence, a little family chat.

“So you didn’t horsewhip and you didn’t prosecute.  You preferred to wriggle out!”

“Yes,” said Mavick, too much pleased with the result to be belligerent, “I let the newspaper do the wriggling.”

“Oh, my dear, I can trust you for that.  Have you any idea how it got hold of the details?”

“No; you don’t think McDonald—­”

“McDonald!  I’d as soon suspect myself.  So would you.”

“Well, everybody knew it already, for that matter.  I only wonder that some newspaper didn’t get on to it before.  What did Evelyn say?”

“Nothing more than what you heard at dinner.  She thought it amusing that there should be such a crowd to gaze at the house, simply because a picture of it had appeared in a newspaper.  She thought her father must be a very important personage.  I didn’t undeceive her.  At times, you know, dear, I think so myself.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that,” said Mavick, with a good-natured laugh, in which Carmen joined, “and those times usually coincide with the times that you want something specially.”

“You ought to be ashamed to take me up that way.  I just wanted to talk about the coming-out reception.  You know I had come over to your opinion that seventeen was perhaps better than eighteen, considering Evelyn’s maturity.  When I was seventeen I was just as good as I am now.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Mavick, with another laugh.

“But don’t you see this affair upsets all our arrangements?  It’s very vexatious.”

“I don’t see it exactly.  By-the-way, what do you think of the escape suggested by the Spectrum, in the assertion that you and Evelyn had arranged to go to Europe?  The steamer sails tomorrow.”

“Think!” exclaimed Carmen.  “Do you think I am going to be run, as you call it, by the newspapers?  They run everything else.  I’m not politics, I’m not an institution, I’m not even a revolution.  No, I thank you.  It answers my purpose for them to say we have gone.”

“I suppose you can keep indoors a few days.  As to the reception, I had arranged my business for it.  I may be in Mexico or Honolulu the following winter.”

“Well, we can’t have it now.  You see that.”

“Carmen, I don’t care a rap what the public thinks or says.  The child’s got to face the world some time, and look out for herself.  I fancy she will not like it as much as you did.”

“Very likely.  Perhaps I liked it because I had to fight it.  Evelyn never will do that.”

“She hasn’t the least idea what the world is like.”

“Don’t you be too sure of that, my dear; you don’t understand yet what a woman feels and knows.  You think she only sees and thinks what she is told.  The conceit of men is most amusing about this.  Evelyn is deeper than you think.  The discrimination of that child sometimes positively frightens me—­how she sees into things.  It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if she actually knew her father and mother!”