“I thought so!” The young man’s manner expressed a sort of angry triumph. “Now, Mr. Barrison, you must come. Sybil must talk to you, whether she feels like it or not! You know, the whole idea is too absurd——” “I think it is absurd myself!” said Barrison kindly. “But you know it’s just those ridiculous things that make such a lot of bother in the world! Miss Merivale, I’m convinced, is the last person in the world to have committed any sort of a crime.” “Heavens! I should say so!” “And yet—what was it that she hid in her dress that night?” Norman stopped and stared at him. “Why should you think she hid anything in her dress?” he demanded in unfeigned astonishment. “I’ll tell you by and by,” said Barrison evasively. He saw that Crane was really surprised by this, and he was debating with himself just how far it was politic and wise to go in this direction. In another few minutes they were at the boarding house where Sybil lived—a quiet house in the upper Forties, kept by a gentle, gray-haired woman who seemed of another day and generation, and who called Norman “my dear boy,” with a soft Southern drawl. Miss Merivale was better, she said; so much so, in fact, that she had had her removed into her own parlor at the front of the house, where she could have more cheerful surroundings and see her friends, the sweet lady added, smiling, if she felt strong enough. If the gentlemen would take the trouble to walk upstairs, she was sure they would do Miss Merivale good. She was better, but not so bright as one could wish. The boarding-house keeper and Norman Crane ascended first, and shortly after the former came back to tell Barrison that they were expecting him, if he would go up. “I thought,” she added softly, “that they would want to see each other, and so I had her couch fixed in my place, where I can be in and out, so to speak. Not that I’d have the time,” she added, gently humorous, “but it’s the idea, you know! I’m from the So’th, sir, and I have my funny notions about the proprieties!” Sybil, on the landlady’s old-fashioned sofa, looked rather pathetically wan, but she made an effort to greet Jim with some animation and cordiality. It was plain that she was still very shaken and depressed, and that her fiancé was much worried about her. She went at once to the matters that were in all their minds. It was characteristic of the girl that she did not shrink from approaching even the subjects responsible for her recent collapse. And she was very fair to look at, in her soft blue dressing gown lying back among the faded chintz cushions, with her ash-blond hair in two long braids upon her shoulders. Kitty Legaye should have seen her now! “Mr. Barrison,” she said at once, “it is awfully good of you to have called. Norman and I know that you are here as a friend, and not as an officer of the law, and we are both grateful. Mr. Barrison, you surely don’t think I had anything to do with—with that horror the other night?”