"Yes, I know, dear," she returned. "It's a mystery, and one in the solving of which I seem perfectly helpless. I do wish someone would drop from the sky to help us." XLII DAYS THAT CREEP SLOWLY BY It was not from the sky, however, but from across the ocean that the help Lillian had longed for in solving the mystery of Dicky's abandonment of me, finally came. It was less than a week after the receipt of Grace Draper's message, that Lillian and I, sitting in her wonderful white and scarlet living room, one evening after little Marion had gone to bed, heard Betty ushering in callers. "Betty must know them or she wouldn't bring them in unannounced," Lillian murmured, as she rose to her feet, and then the next moment there was framed in the doorway the tall figure of Dr. Pettit. And with him, wonder of wonders! the slight form, the beautiful, wistful, tired face of Katharine Sonnot, whose ambition to go to France as a nurse I had been able to further. "My dear, what has happened to you?" Katherine exclaimed solicitously. "I received no answer to my letter saying I was coming home, so when I reached New York, I went to Dr. Pettit. He thought you were at Marvin, but when he telephoned out there, Katie said you had had a terrible accident, and that you had left Marvin. I was not quite sure, for she was half crying over the telephone, but I thought she said 'for keeps.'" She stopped and looked at me with a hint of fright in her manner. I knew she wanted to ask about Dicky's absence, and did not dare to do so. "Everything you heard is true, Katherine," I returned, a trifle unsteadily, as her arms went around me warmly. I was more than a trifle upset by her coming, for associated with her were memories of my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett, who had gone to the great war when he had learned that I was married, and of whose death "somewhere in France," I had heard through Mrs. Stewart. "Where is your husband?" Dr. Pettit demanded, and there was that in his voice which told me that he was putting an iron hand upon his own emotions. Now the stock answer which Lillian and I returned to all inquiries of this sort was "In San Francisco upon a big commission." It was upon my lips, but some influence stronger than my will made me change it to the truth. "I do not know," I said faintly. "He left the city very abruptly several weeks ago, sending word in a letter to Mrs. Underwood that he would never see me again. It is a terrible mystery." Dr. Pettit muttered something that I knew was a bitter anathema against Dicky, and then folded his arms tightly across his chest, as if he would keep in any further comment. But I had no time to pay any attention to him, for Katherine Sonnot was uttering words that bewildered and terrified me. "Oh! how terrible!" she said. "Jack will be so grieved. He had so hoped to find you happy together when he came home."