wanly.

"Of course not," she cried. "You are interested in dreadful
happenings--I had forgotten that. I suppose you _are_ really quite
delighted; and instead of my craving pardon I should be expecting
praise, for putting you in the way of this one."

She laughed lightly; a smile flitted across his keen face, as he rose
and said:

"What has happened may make a change in the affairs of Allan Morris."

She came to him and laid a hand upon his arm. Her coolness won his
admiration.

"I beg of you to forget all that I told you yesterday," she said. "I
had been brooding so long that I had begun to fancy all sorts of
impossible things. I see very clearly now that this man Hume could
have had nothing of any consequence to do with Mr. Morris. It was a
romance--a rather foolish fancy, and a very wild one."

There was sweet seriousness in her manner; and the lurking smile
still hovered about her lips. It was as though a return to reason had
driven away the fears of the day before--the alarmed girl had given
place to a sensible woman.

But behind all this, Ashton-Kirk could detect something else. The
almost swooning terror of the girl who had spoken to him over the
telephone was still there--held rigidly in check to be sure, but
unquestionably there. While her lips smiled, the eyes sometimes