He looked up and as he did so chaos broke loose within him. There at the top, in the subdued light from the upper hall, startled, uncertain, off her guard stood Miss Lady, not the pretty, harum-scarum girl of his dreams, but a beautiful, wistful woman with trembling lips and startled eyes, who held out her hands to him in involuntary welcome. He lost his head completely. All the blood in his body rushed to his throat. Something sang through every fiber of him. “Miss Lady!” he cried, catching the hands she extended in both of his, then as she drew back from his too ardent look, he remembered. “I beg your pardon of course it's Mrs. Queerington, now.” “Not to you, Don. When did you come? Are you well again? Didn't any one know you were coming? Have the others seen you?” She poured forth her questions eagerly, as if she feared another pause. She was making a desperate effort to appear easy, but her eagerness betrayed her. She repeated that she had no idea he was in America, and took refuge in a general assurance that everybody would be so glad to have him home again. Donald, lean and tanned, stood silent, watching her searchingly. His deep-set eyes were clearer and steadier than of old, but they were no longer the eyes of a boy. He was like a mariner whose ship has been wrecked. He had nothing worse to dread and nothing to hope for. He simply desired to see the rock on which his life craft had smashed. Miss Lady continued to ask questions, but she evidently did not always heed the answers as she asked some of them twice over. It was not until Donald's trouble was touched upon that her mood steadied and she lost her self-consciousness. “Of course you must stand the trial,” she said, and her voice rang with the old assurance; “you must fight the whole matter out once for all, and prove your innocence.” “Oh, the Court will prove that all right, but what does it matter? If people were willing to damn me without hearing, to believe that I had shot a man's eye out, then run away to escape the punishment--Bah! it's sickening.” “But everybody doesn't believe it. The Doctor doesn't, nor Margery, nor Cropsie Decker, nor I. Hundreds of your friends are ready to stand by you. Don't listen to what anybody else says, but stay and fight it out.” He looked up suddenly. “Did you ever get that letter I wrote you before I sailed from 'Frisco?” He hadn't meant to blurt it out like that, the question that had tortured him so long, but her sympathy and friendliness had unnerved him. Leaning forward with all his soul in his eyes, he watched the color mount steadily from her throat to her cheeks, then to her brow. He heard her draw a sharp, quivering breath as one who walks on a precipice, then she faced him steadily. “Yes, Donald,” she said, meeting his gaze unflinchingly, “I got it.”