A man's step came rapidly through the lower hall, ringing upon the solid floor, and sounding through the unfurnished house. "Sunderline! Thank heaven, sir, you're safe! Do you know how near you were to backing out of that confounded window? I saw you from the outside. In the name of goodness, have that place boarded up again! It shouldn't be left for five minutes." "Was _that_ it?" asked Frank, still bending over Ray, while Mr. Newrich said all this as he hurried up the stairs. "I didn't fall, I tumbled down on purpose! It was the only thing I could think of," said Ray, nervously smiling; justifying herself, instinctively, from the betrayal of a feeling that makes girls faint away in novels. "I felt weak afterward. Anybody would." "That's a fact," said Mr. Newrich, stopping at the landing, and glancing out through the aperture. "I shall never think of it, without shivering. You were as good as gone: a hair's breadth more would have done it. God bless my soul! If my place had had such a christening as that!" The whiteness came over Ray Ingraham's face again She was just rising to her feet, with her hand upon the rail. "Sit still," said Frank. "Let me go and bring you some water." "She'll feel better to be by herself a minute or two, I dare say," said Mr. Newrich, following Frank as he went down. He had the tact to think of this, but not to go without saying it. "A quick-witted young woman," he remarked, as they passed out of her hearing. "And sensible enough to keep her wits ahead of her feelings. If she had come _at_ you, as half the women in the world would have done, you'd be a dead man this minute. Your sister, Sunderline?" "No, sir--only a friend." "Ah! _onlier_ than a sister, may be? Well!" Sunderline replied nothing, beyond a look. "I beg your pardon. It's none of my business." "It's none of my business, so far as I know," said Frank. "If it were, there would be no pardon to beg." "You're a fine fellow; and she's a fine girl. I suppose I may say that. I tell you what; if you _had_ come to grief, at the very end of this job you've done so well for me, I believe I should have put the place under the hammer. I couldn't have begun with such a piece of Friday luck as that!" There were long pauses between the talk, as Ray and Frank drove back together into the city. "Ray!" Frank said at last, suddenly, just as they came opposite to the row of little brown big-hatted houses, where they had talked about the bonny bowls,--"My life is either worth more or less to me, after this. You are the only woman in the world I could like to owe it to. Will you take what I owe? Will you be the _onliest_ woman in the world to me?" Oddly enough, that word of Mr. Newrich's, that had half affronted him, came up to his lips involuntarily and unexpectedly, now. Words are apt to come up so--in a sort of spite of us--that have made an impression, even when it has been that of simple misuse. Ray did not answer. She felt it quite impossible to speak.