“You—­you know him?” Larry stammered.

She answered with a whimsical smile:  “Yes.  Isn’t he a grand, foolish old dear?  He’s such a roistering, bragging personage that I’ve named him Benvenuto Cellini—­though he’s neither liar nor thief.  He must have told you what I called him.”

So that explained this password of “Benvenuto Cellini”!  “No, he didn’t explain anything.  There was no time.”

“I don’t know where he is,” she continued; “please don’t tell me.  I don’t want to know until he wants me to know.”

Larry had been making a swift appraisal of her.  She was perhaps thirty, fair, with golden-brown hair held in place by a large comb of wrought gold, with violet-blue eyes, wearing a low-cut gown of violet chiffon velvet and dull gold shoes.  Larry’s instinct told him that here was a patrician, a thoroughbred:  with poise, with a knowledge of the world, with whimsical humor, with a kindly understanding of people, with steel in her, and with a smiling readiness for almost any situation.

“I think no one will find you—­at least for the present,” her pleasantly modulated voice continued.  “There are so many things I want to talk over with you.  Perhaps I can help about Maggie.  I hope you don’t mind my talking about her.”  Larry could not imagine any one taking offense at anything this brilliant apparition might possibly say.  “But we’ll put off our talk until to-morrow.  It’s late, and you’re wet and cold, and besides, my aunt is having one of her bad spells and thinks she needs me.  Judkins will see to you.  Good-night.”

“Good-night,” said Larry.

She moved gracefully out—­almost floated, Larry would have said.  The next moment the man was with him who had been his escort here, and led Larry into a spacious bedroom with bath attached.  Ten minutes later Judkins made his exit, carrying Larry’s outer clothes; and another ten minutes later, after a hot bath, and garbed in silk pajamas which Judkins had produced, Larry was in the softest and freshest bed that had ever held him.

But sleep did not come to Larry for a long time.  He lay wondering about this golden-haired, poiseful Miss Sherwood.  She was undoubtedly the woman in the back of Hunt’s life.  And he wondered about Hunt—­who he really was—­what had really driven him into this strange exile.  And he wondered about Maggie—­what she might be doing—­what from this strange new vantage-point he might do for her and with her.  And he wondered how his own complex situation was going to work itself out.

And still wondering, Larry at length fell asleep.

CHAPTER XII

When Larry awoke the next morning, he blinked for several bewildered moments about his bedroom, so unlike his cell at Sing Sing and so unlike Hunt’s helter-skelter studio down at the Duchess’s which he had shared, before he realized that this big, airy chamber and this miracle of a bed on which he lay were realities and not a mere continuation of a dream of fantastic and body-flattering wealth.