“Mr. Garrick,” she returned, in a sudden burst of confidence, “I’m afraid you, too, misunderstand me.  I am not hard on the boy.  But, remember.  I knew his mother and father—­intimately.  Think of it, sir—­the responsibilities that rest on that young man.  Do you wonder that I—­I want him better than others?  Don’t you see—­that is why I want to hold him up to the highest standard.  If Violet—­ marries him,” she seemed to choke over the word,—­“they must meet tests that ordinary people never know.  Don’t you understand?  I’ve seen other young men and other young women in our circle—­they were our babies once—­I’ve seen them—­go down.  But I—­I am proud.  The Winslows, yes, and the Warringtons, they,—­they shan’t go down—­not while I have an ounce of strength or a grain of sanity.  Nothing—­nothing but the best that is in us—­counts.”

I think Mrs. de Lancey and Garrick understood each other perfectly after that.  He said nothing, in fact did not need to say anything, for he looked it.

“I feel that I can safely resign my job as guardian,” was all he remarked, finally.  “Neither of them could be in better hands.  Only, keep that boy quiet a few days.  You can do it better than I can—­you and Miss Winslow.  Trust me to do the rest.”

A moment later we were passing out through the hotel lobby, as Garrick glanced at his watch.

“A wonderful woman, after all,” he mused, in the manner of one who revises an estimate formed hastily on someone else’s hearsay.  “Well, it’s too late to do anything more to-night.  I suppose those papers are printed down at the Star.  We’ll stop and get them in the morning.  Did you recognise the voice over the vocaphone?”

“I can’t say I did,” I confessed.

“Perhaps you aren’t used to it and things sound too metallic to you.  But I did.  It was the Chief.”

“I suspected as much,” I replied.  “Where do you suppose he went?”

Garrick shrugged his shoulders.

“I doubt whether we could find him in New York to-night,” he answered, slowly.  “I think he must feel by this time that the town is getting too hot for him.”

There was nothing that I could say, and I played the part admirably.

“Come,” he decided, as he turned from the hotel in the direction, now, of our apartment.  “Let’s snatch a little rest.  We’ll need it to-morrow for the final spurt.”

Tired and exhausted though I was I cannot say that I slept.  At least, it may have been physical rest that I got.  Certainly my mind never stopped in its dream play, as the kaleidoscopic stream of events passed before me, now in their true form, now in the fantastic shapes that constitute one of the most interesting studies of the modern psychology.

I was glad when I heard Garrick stirring in his room in the early daylight and heard him call out, “Are you awake, Tom?  There are some things I want to attend to, while you drop into the Star for those papers.  I’m afraid you’ll have to breakfast alone.  Meet me at my office as soon as you can.”