Ormsby Grail had dreamed dreams centering about this fair-haired, slender daughter of his colonel. He had seen her blossom from the child he had once taken on his knee into a charming woman, and learned to love her. But he had refrained from whispering any word of his love to her. She was too young, he told himself; she could not possibly know her own mind. Even when it was decided that she should go to Chicago for a year to cultivate her remarkable voice, he still had not ventured to speak. He would wait a little longer, he decided. She seemed to him no more than a child. So, although he wrote to her frequently, in a friendly, brotherly sort of fashion, and never let a week go by without some remembrance from him, he sedulously concealed from her the real state of his feelings--or thought he did--and never dared visit her in Chicago. Half extending his arms, he took a hasty step toward her, then halted abruptly, the recollection sweeping over him of what she must have heard. “You wished to see me?” he asked, in a controlled voice. “Yes.” Her glance met his steadily, although she was somewhat nervously twisting her hands in their brown suede gloves. “I want to ask you about father.” “Haven’t the others told you?” he inquired. Then, as she nodded, he added, with a touch of defiance: “I suppose you have heard, too, what they are saying about me?” “I have heard.” “And do you believe it?” “If I believed part of it,” she said, “I would be the happiest girl in the world!” CHAPTER VII. NEW DEVELOPMENTS. Grail stared at the girl in bewilderment as she repeated: “Yes, the happiest girl in the world. For if I thought you were responsible for his disappearance, as they say, I should know that no harm could possibly have befallen him. It is because I am certain of your innocence that I am apprehensive; and it is because I know you must be moving heaven and earth in the effort to find him that I have come to ask you what you have discovered. What faith can I put in Major Appleby’s promises”--she gave a deprecating gesture--“when I see how he is bungling things? But, surely, you can tell me whether or not there is any real ground for hope?” A great flash of joy and wonder lighted Grail’s face. “Meredith,” he cried huskily, “I never expected to feel so proud in all my life! You don’t know what your trust and confidence mean to me!” Then, afraid that if he said more, he might say too much, he placed a chair for her and drew up one for himself. “More than that,” he went on, “I am going to prove to you that your faith is not misplaced. Take my word for it, your father shall be restored to you within a very short time; before to-morrow morning, unless I am very much mistaken.” Never yet, in their long acquaintance, had Grail failed to make good a promise to her, and his assurance now brought a sigh of genuine relief to her lips and a smile to her pale, anxious face.