While he pressed her hand she looked searchingly into his eyes, a fact of which he was conscious despite her veil. “I'm not here--as far as my people may know. I'm at the Catskills with my cousins--except to my cousins themselves. To them I've come back home for a week's conference with my dressmaker. Our house isn't entirely closed up, you know. Aunt Rachel likes the hot weather of Philadelphia all summer through, and she's still here. When I arrived here this morning, I told her the dressmaker story. She retires at eight and she thinks I'm in bed too. But I'm here, and nobody suspects it but you and Mary, the servant at home, who knows where I've come, and who's to stay up for me till I return to-night. That's all of it, and now, as you're a friend of mine, you mustn't tell any one, will you?” “But I know nothing to tell,” said the bewildered doctor. “What does all this subterfuge, this mystery mean?” Amy Winnett considered silently for a moment, while Doctor Haslam mentally admired the slim, well-rounded figure, the graceful poise of the little head with its mass of brown hair beneath a sailor hat of the style that “came in” with this summer. “I may as well tell you all,” she answered, presently. “I may need your assistance, too. I can rely upon you?” “Through fire and water.” “I've come to Philadelphia to prevent a suicide.” “Good gracious!” “Yes. You see, I've broken the engagement between me and Tom Appleton.” “What! You don't mean it?” There was a striking note of jubilation in the doctor's interruption. Miss Winnett made no comment thereupon, but continued: “I finally decided that I didn't care as much for Tom as I'd thought I did, and then I had a suspicion--but I won't mention that--” “No, you needn't. Your fortune--pardon me, I simply took the privilege of an old friend who had himself been rejected by you. Go on.” “Don't interrupt again. As I said, I concluded that I couldn't be Tom's wife, and I told him so. He went to the Catskills when we went, you know, as he thought he could keep up his law studies as well there as here. You can't imagine how he took it. I'd never before known how much he--he really wished to marry me. But I was unflinching, and at last he left me, vowing that he would return to Philadelphia and commit suicide. He swore a terrible oath that my next message from him would be found in his hands after his death. And he set to-night as the time for the deed.” “But why couldn't he have done it there and then?” “How hard-hearted you are! Probably because he wanted to put his affairs in order before putting an end to his life.” She spoke in all seriousness. Doctor Haslam succeeded with difficulty in restraining a smile. “You don't imagine for a moment,” he said, “that the young man intended keeping his oath.” “Don't I? You should have seen the look on his face when he spoke it.” “Well?”