Obeying a blind impulse, she darted to the door, flung it open, and was half-way along the stone passage before the startled governor had overtaken her. “Whatever is the matter with you, girl?” he demanded, half astonished and half angry. “Are you ill?” “Let me go, let me go!” she muttered incoherently. “I must go to her!” And then she came back to sanity with a gasp, and allowed herself to be led back to the governor’s room. “You sit down there while I give you a slight sedative,” said the doctor, as he closed the door with a bang which echoed along the hollow passage. He opened the medicine chest, deftly mixed the contents of three bottles and added water from a carafe on his table. “Drink this,” he said. The girl raised the glass to her lips with fingers that shook, and the governor, hearing the glass rattle against her teeth, smiled. “I think I’m a little mad,” she said. “You’re a little hysterical,” said the practical doctor, “and it is my fault for letting you see these people. We’ve broken all the rules by talking about them.” “I’m dreadfully sorry,” she muttered, as she put the glass on the table. “I--I--it was so dreadful!” “Of course it was,” he said. “And I was several kinds of an old fool to talk about it.” “Will you tell me one thing, doctor, please? What--what became of the child?” The doctor was obviously loth to discuss the matter any further. “I believe she died,” he said briefly. “She was taken away by some excellent people, but they failed to rear her. That is the story I have. As a matter of fact it was published in the newspapers--there was a great deal of interest in the case--that the child had died in prison, but that was not the case. She was a healthy little creature when she left here. And now, young lady, I am going to turn you out.” He rang for the wardress, who conducted her to the gatekeeper’s lodge, and in another second Lois was standing outside the black door, behind which was--who? She was mad to have made such a fool of herself. There was so much more she wanted to know, so many opportunities which might have been hers to see the beautiful woman who was--her mother? Her heart raced at the thought. It couldn’t be! Her mother was dead; that stout, homely body who had been a mother to her. It was a coincidence. There must be other children in the world called “Lois Margeritta” than she, and it was possible that some had been branded in babyhood. She shook her head; it was impossible, it was beyond all the bounds of probability that there could be two Lois Margerittas with a star-shaped burn on the left arm.