"You must be crazy!" she exclaimed. "I was pounding a nail into the wall to hang my petticoat on, and Liane is asleep in the bedroom. If you don't believe me, go and look!" They did not believe her, so they tiptoed to the door and peeped inside, and there, indeed, lay the girl, seeming in the dim half light to be sleeping sweetly and naturally. "You can wake her if you choose, but she said she was very tired, and hoped I would not disturb her to-night," said artful granny coolly, though in a terrible fright lest she be taken at her word. They retreated in something like shamefaced confusion, leaving granny mistress of the situation. "What made you so sure she was beating the girl?" asked Carlos Cisneros of Sophie Nutter, who had raised the alarm. "I used to know them at Stonecliff, where they lived, and she beat her there, poor thing, so when I heard the noise I thought she was at her old tricks again!" replied Sophie, going back downstairs to the parlor, where she had been looking at Mrs. Brinkley's photographs. The language teacher followed her, and as he was rather handsome, and knew how to be fascinating with women, he soon gained her confidence, and found out everything she knew about Stonecliff, even to the cause of her leaving Roma Clarke's service. His eyes gleamed with interest as she added earnestly: "Although I have seen Mr. Devereaux alive since, and they tell me I was raving crazy that night, still I can never be persuaded that I did not see Miss Clarke push a man over the bluff to his death." She was astounded when he answered coolly: "You were not mistaken, but the man was not Devereaux. It was another, who held a dangerous secret of hers, so that she wanted him dead." Sophie looked at him suspiciously. "Did you see her push him over the bluff as I did? Ugh! That horrible scene! It comes before me now, as plain as if it was that night!" she shuddered. She was amazed when he answered: "I was the man she tried to drown!" He was secretly delighted that there had been a witness to Roma's crime. It made his hold upon her that much firmer. He added, in reply to Sophie's gasp of wonder: "I was saved by a passing yacht, and put in a hospital, where I nearly died from a wound on my head." Sophie gasped out: "And--and aren't you going to punish the hussy?" His eyes flashed, but he answered carelessly: "Well, not just yet!" "Shall you ever?" "Wait and see," he replied. "Can you imagine what brought her into this house to-day?" "I cannot. I suppose she knew Granny Jenks at Stonecliff; but I am sure she hated sweet Liane, because she carried off the beauty prize over her head." Carlos Cisneros gleaned all he could from Sophie, but he gave her no further information about himself, content with making a very good impression, indeed, on Sophie's rather susceptible heart.