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“Ridiculous! Do you imagine that I’m going to sleep on your best clothes? I’m going to sit up.”

“You’ll have to do as I say, madam, or be turned out of the hotel,” said he, with an infectious grin.

“But I insist upon your lying down. You have no reason for doing this for me. Besides, I’m going to sit up. Good-night!”

“You are tired and ready to cry,” he said, calmly going on with his preparations. She stood off defiantly and watched him pile his best clothes into a rather comfortable-looking heap on one of the long benches. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll make a pillow of these negligée shirts. They’re soft, you know.”

“Stop! I refuse to accept your–” she was protesting.

“Do you want me to leave you here all alone?” he demanded. “With the country full of tramps and–“

“Don’t! It’s cowardly of you to frighten me. They say the railroads are swarming with tramps, too. Won’t you please go and see if Mr. Dudley is anywhere in sight?”

“It was mean of me, I confess. Please lie down. It’s getting cold. Pull this raincoat over yourself. I’ll walk out and–“

“Oh, but you are a determined person. And very foolish, too. Why should you lose a lot of sleep just for me when–?”

“There is no reason why two men should fail you to-night, Mrs.–Miss–“

“Miss Dering,” she said, humbled.

“When you choose to retire, Miss Dering, you will find your room quite ready,” he said with fine gallantry, bowing low as he stood in the doorway. “I will be just outside on the platform, so don’t be uneasy.”

He quickly faded into the night, leaving her standing there, petulant, furious, yet with admiration in her eyes. Ten minutes later he heard her call. She was sitting on the edge of the improvised couch, smiling sweetly, even timidly.

“It must be cold out there. You must wear this.”

She came toward him, the raincoat in one hand, the purple parasol in the other. He took the parasol only and departed without a word. She gasped and would have called after him, but there was no use. With a perplexed frown and smile she went slowly, dubiously toward the folded bed.

Rossiter smoked three cigars and walked two miles up and down the platform, swinging the parasol absent-mindedly, before he ventured to look inside the room again. In that time he had asked and answered many questions in his mind. He saw that it would be necessary to change his plans if he was to watch her successfully. She evidently gave out Eagle Nest to blind her husband. Somehow he was forgetting that the task before him was disagreeable and undignified. What troubled him most was how to follow them if Havens–or Dudley–put in an appearance for the three-thirty train. He began to curse Everett Havens softly but potently.

When he looked into the waiting-room she was sound asleep on the bench. It delighted him to see that she had taken him at his word and was lying upon his clothes. Cautiously he took a seat on the door-sill. The night was as still as death and as lonesome as the grave. For half an hour he sat gazing upon the tired, pretty face and the lithe young figure of the sleeper. He found himself dreaming, although he was wide awake–never more so. It occurred to him that he would be immensely pleased to hear that Havens’s reason for failing her was due to an accident in which he had been killed.

“Those clothes will have to be pressed the first thing to-morrow,” he said to himself, but without a trace of annoyance. “Hang it all, she doesn’t look like that sort of woman,” his mind switched. “But just think of being tied up to an old crocodile like Wharton! Gee! One oughtn’t to blame her!”

Then he went forth into the night once more and listened for the sound of buggy wheels. It was almost time for the arrival of the belated man from the country, and he was beginning to pray that he would not appear at all. It came to his mind that he should advise her to return to New York in the morning. At last his watch told him that the train was due to pass in five minutes. And still no buggy! Good! He felt an exhilaration that threatened to break into song.