"No, thank you. I'll be all right. I'm hard as nails. I'm only anxious about her. You see, she's had a pretty tough pull of it. She started to walk to the city! Did you know that? I fancy she'd gone about two miles. It was somewhere along near the river I found her. It seems she got "all in" and sat down on a door-step to rest. She must have fallen asleep. Some tough fellows came out of a saloon--they were full, of course--and they discovered her. I heard her scream, and we had quite a little scuffle before we got away. She's a nervy little girl. Think of her starting to walk to the city at that time of night, without a cent in her pocket!" "The poor child!" said Nurse Wright, with tears in her kind, keen eyes. "And she left her last cent here to pay for her room! My! When I think of it I could choke that smart young snob that called on her in the afternoon! You ought to have heard her sneers and her insinuations. Women like that are a blight on womanhood! And she dared to mention your name--said you had sent her!" The color heightened in Courtland's face. He felt uncomfortable. "Why, I--didn't exactly send her," he began, uneasily. "I don't really know her very well. You see, I'm just a student at the university and of course I don't know a great many girls in the city. I thought it would be nice if some girl would call on Miss Brentwood; she seemed so alone. I thought another girl would understand and be able to comfort her." "She isn't a _girl_, that's what's the matter with her; she's a little _demon_!" snapped the nurse. "You meant well, and I dare say she never showed _you_ the demon side of her. Girls like that don't--to young _men_. But if you take my advice you won't have anything more to do with _her_! She isn't worth it! She may be rich and fashionable and all that, but she can't hold a candle to Miss Brentwood! If you had just heard how she went on, with her nasty little chin in the air and her nasty phrases and insinuations, and her patronage! And then Miss Brentwood's gentle, refined way of answering her! But never mind, I won't go into that! It might take me all night, and I've got to go back to my patient. But you are not to blame yourself one particle. I hope Miss Brentwood's going to get through this all right in a few days, and she'll probably have forgotten all about it, so don't you worry. I think it would be a good thing if you were to come in and see her to-morrow afternoon a few minutes. It might cheer her up. You really have been fine, you know! No telling where she might have been by this time if you hadn't gone out after her!" The young man shuddered involuntarily, and thought of the faces of the five young fellows who had surrounded her. "I saw a little girl in the morgue to-night, drowned!" he said, irrelevantly. "She wasn't any older than Miss Brentwood."