“I was afraid—I thought maybe——” She drew away from the door in confusion. “I only wanted to know—to know—what that noise was.” But Toppy had stepped outside the shop and followed closely after her. “What did you think it was, Miss Pearson?” he asked. “What were you afraid of when you heard that shot? That something had happened between Reivers and myself?” “I—I meant to warn you,” she said, greatly flustered. “Tilly told me all about—a lot of things last night. She told me that she had told Reivers all she heard you say to me that first night here, and that he—Mr. Reivers, she said, was your enemy, and that he would—would surely hurt you.” “Yes?” “I didn’t want to see you get hurt, because I felt it was because of me that you came here. I—I don’t want any one hurt because of me.” “That’s all?” he asked. She looked surprised. “Why, yes.” Toppy nodded curtly. “Then Tilly told you that Mr. Reivers had a habit of hurting people?” At this the red in her cheeks rose to a flush. Her blue eyes looked at him waveringly, then dropped to the ground. “It isn’t true! It can’t be true!” she stammered. “Did Tilly tell you—about herself?” he persisted mercilessly. The next instant he wished the words unsaid, for she shrank as if he had struck her. She looked very small just then. Her proud, self-reliant bearing was gone. She was very much all alone. “Yes.” The word was scarcely more than a whisper and she did not look up. “But it—it can not be so; I know it can not.” Toppy was no student of feminine psychology, but he saw plainly that just then she was a woman who did not wish to believe, therefore would not believe, anything ill of the man who had fascinated her. He saw that Reivers had fascinated her; that in spite of herself she was drawn toward him, dominated by him. Her mind told her that what she had heard of the man was true, but her heart refused to let her believe. Toppy saw that she was very unhappy and troubled, and unselfishly he forgot himself and his enmity toward Reivers in a desire to help her. “Miss Pearson!—Miss Pearson!” he cried eagerly. “Is there anything I can do for you—anything in the world?” “Yes,” she said slowly. “Tell me that it isn’t so—what Mr. Campbell and Tilly have said about Mr. Reivers.” “I——” He was about to say that he could do nothing of the sort, but something made him halt. “Has Reivers broken his word to you—about leaving you alone?” “No, no! He’s—he’s left me alone. He’s scarcely spoken to me half a dozen times.” Toppy looked down at her for several seconds. “But you’ve begun to care for Reivers, haven’t you?” he said. The girl looked up at him uncertainly. “I don’t know. Oh, I don’t know! I don’t seem to have any will of my own toward him. I seem to see him as a different man. I know I shouldn’t; but I can’t help it, I can help it! He—he looks at me, and I feel as if—as if—” her voice died down to a horrified whisper—“I were nothing, and his wishes were the only things in the world.”