Could this be the girl who had so very recently clung to her, weeping, and begging to be shielded from even the sight of the man who was her "closest friend!" How could Mrs. Dunlap help giving a second's thought to such a question? But she turned swiftly from it and tried again. "Wait, please," she said patiently, "I must tell you the rest. I have had a longer acquaintance with the man than you have heard as yet. After breakfast Mrs. Oliver asked him to take me into the library and show me some prints while she attended to other duties, and when he had closed and locked the doors, he threw himself on my mercy and begged me not to wreck his household by telling his wife and children what I knew about him. He did not attempt to deny that he was of course the same Mr. Keller with whom I had held a long conversation two nights before. "In fact, he frankly owned that you had been what he called a 'temptation' to him, but that the marriage ceremony which he professed at that time to be about to enter into, had been only a joke, of course, intended to relieve your anxieties for being away from your mother longer than you had planned. I would not like to tear your heart nor soil my lips by repeating the words that he used to describe your wonderful mother and her ignorant prejudice as he called it. "He also told me that his friend who posed as a minister for the time being was an amateur play actor who had successfully impersonated a clergyman while they were in college, which gave him the idea of a mock marriage to quiet your protests. "And now, I will show you a paper written and signed by this man, in which he pledges never to write or telegraph or telephone you, or visit you again. It is a paper that I went back to secure, after I had started on this western trip, and the man knows that his keeping this agreement both in letter and spirit is the price of my silence toward his wife and children. His wife is a charming and beautiful woman, and his two daughters are as sweet and charming as yourself. It seemed terrible to wreck that home, but I would not keep silence unless I felt sure you would be safe forever from him." Marguerite Sheldon tilted her patrician chin haughtily, a little smile of scorn on her lovely lips.