'"
"Come in and say it to my aunt," Olivia applauded. "Aunt Dora is
dying of ennui up here."
They crossed the terrace in the hush of the tropic night. Through
the fairy black and silver the four figures moved, and it was as if
the king's palace--that sky thing, with ramparts of air--had at
length found expression and knew a way to answer the ancient
glamourie of the moon.
CHAPTER XV
A VIGIL
Upon Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Augustus Frothingham, drowsing over the
pocket chess-board, the sound of footsteps and men's voices in the
corridor acted with electrical effect. Then the door was opened and
behind Olivia and Antoinette appeared the two visitors who seemed to
have fallen from the neighbouring heavens. The two chess-pretenders
looked up aghast. If there were a place in the world where
chaperonage might be relaxed the uninformed observer would say that
it would be the top of Mount Khalak.
"Mercy around us!" cried Mrs. Medora Hastings, "if it isn't that
newspaper man! He's probably come over here to cable it all over the
front page of every paper in New York.
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