At Brindisi, a month later, Grace found Douglass's letter awaiting her. She kissed it furtively and thrust it in her bosom, reserving its reading for the privacy of her room. Not until she had crept into bed did she open the prosaic government-stamped envelope which he methodically used. She always read his letters so, punctuating each tender sentence with a kiss and going to sleep with It tucked In her nightdress next her heart. This was an unusually bulky enclosure and she hugged it in anticipation; how sweet it was of him to devote so much of his time to her in his busiest season. Passionately she pressed her lips to it again and with a sigh of delight drew out--a single sheet of note paper enclosing a closely-folded page of printed matter. As though doubting her senses, she sat erect in bed and unfolded the newspaper; there was nothing enclosed therein and with perplexity writ large all over her face she turned curiously to the written sheet. Slowly, as one in a daze, she read and reread it a dozen times; it was very short and in nowise ambiguously phrased, yet she did not seem able to grasp its meaning: "My congratulations on the speed and facility with which your very astute and clever mother has extricated you from what must certainly have been a very embarrassing entanglement. May you be as happy in your new exalted station as you once made me imagine I was going to be! "Owing you, as I do, not only my life but my fortune as well, for my mines are now in bonanza, I confess to even a greater indebtedness: you gave me a six-month of the only happiness I have ever known. But you would have rendered me an incalculably greater service had you left those dynamite cartridges undisturbed that day. "If in the mutations of time and chance you should ever have need of me, the life and fortune which you gave are at your command. Good-by." In an agony of bewilderment she took up the newspaper, intuitively seeking the Society Columns. Mrs. Robert Carter, leisurely preparing for her night's rest in the adjoining apartment, looked up with a pleasant smile as the communicating door opened, a word of loving greeting on her lips. But there was little of answering affection in the glittering eyes and white face of the girl who, with clenched hands and dilating nostrils, advanced upon her. Something in the unnatural demeanor of Grace alarmed her and she nervously dropped her hair brush and rose to her feet. "Gracie! What is It?" Very deliberately the girl thrust the printed sheet Into her mother's hand and in a calm voice demanded: "Tell me, what part did you have in this?" In astonishment the elder woman ran her eye hurriedly over the item the rigid finger was pointing out; her face hardened with anger and annoyance.