"Why should he?" muttered Cord. This was the maddest theory of all. His head swam with the riot of conflicting impressions. He seemed to have been hurled headlong into a frightful nightmare, and he longed to emerge again into the light of the prosaic, everyday world. The door at the farther end of the room opened. He looked up eagerly, half expecting to see Grayson himself smiling upon the threshold. It was Doris. She stood there for a moment, uncertain, gazing at them rather strangely. In her white morning dress, slightly crumpled, and her dark hair arranged in smooth bandeaux, she was amazingly like a child. The somewhat cold spring sunlight which streamed through the window showed her pallid, as though the event of the night had already set its mark upon her. There were faint violet shadows beneath her eyes. Cord came forward hastily, everything blotted from his mind but the sight of her white, grief-stricken face. He took both her hands in his own warm clasp. All he found to say, huskily, was, "Doris! Doris!" The girl gave him a wide, deep look. Suddenly her lips dipped and quivered uncontrollably. With a short, smothered sob, she flung herself into his arms and hid her face on his shoulder. Cord held her tenderly. "Don't!" he whispered unsteadily. "Don't cry, dear!" In her sorrow, she was inexpressibly sweet and precious to him. The moment recalled vividly an incident in their childhood, when her pet collie had died, and the little girl of seven had flown down the path with streaming eyes to meet him and sobbed out her grief in his arms. He bent down and smoothed with gentle fingers the soft dusky hair. The fragrance of it filled his nostrils. Its softness sent a delicious ecstasy thrilling from his finger-tips up his arm. He trembled throughout his entire frame. All his life, he declared to himself with passionate sincerity, he would love her like this. All his life he would remember this one moment. He gazed down at her tenderly, a wonderful light in his young face. "Dear!" he whispered again. She lifted a pallid face to him. Her violet eyes were misty, and tiny drops of dew were still tangled in her lashes. "You--you are good to me," she murmured. At his answering look, a faint colour swept into her cheeks. She disengaged herself and sat down. Lady Dinsmore came forward, and seating herself beside the girl upon the divan, drew her close within the shelter of her arms. "Now, Cord," she said cheerily, indicating a chair opposite, "sit down, and let us take counsel together. And first of all," she pressed the girl's cold hand, "let me speak my strongest conviction. Gerald is not dead. Something tells me that he is safe and well." Doris turned her eyes to the young man wistfully. "You have heard something--later?" she asked.