Miss Clara Arnold awoke very suddenly and very thoroughly. Her heart gave an awful bound and then stood quite still in a most uncomfortable sort of way. There was no doubt about it--there were people on the piazza just outside her room and they were talking in low but excited tones. All the horror of her situation came upon her, and in one instant she wished more fervently than she ever thought she could wish for anything, that she had taken her friends’ advice and had not decided on a room on the ground floor opening on a piazza. All their warnings and talk of burglars and tramps came vividly to her as she lay there quaking with fear. She could hear quite distinctly the tread of feet outside, and the gentle but firm shaking of the big doors that opened from the broad corridor on the piazza. A sickening sense of fear possessed her and a suffocating pressure was on her lungs. She wondered with all her soul where the night-watchman was, and whether she had better scream or lie quite still. She was trying to decide this when she thought she heard her name called. She sat up, listening intently. And then she heard quite distinctly a girl’s voice saying, hopelessly: “It’s no use--you can’t get that door open and I can’t make Clara hear!” Miss Arnold gave a gasp and then jumped out of bed and into a tea-gown and Turkish slippers. She went quickly into her study and called softly to the girl outside. “Elise, is that you? Just wait a minute!” and then there was more muffled talk outside and a man’s voice in a relieved way saying: “Oh, it’s all right now--how glad I am! I--I wish I could begin to tell you, Miss Ronald, how awfully cut up I am about it”--but the girl stopped him. “I quite understand, Mr. Cunningham,” she said, stiffly. “You had better go now. I am sorry there is no hotel nearer.” And then Miss Arnold heard a muttered good-night and the crunch of footsteps on the gravel, and as she opened the doors a moment later Miss Ronald fell limply into her arms.