“I read it a while ago in an evening paper--a telegraphic item.” Annette thought with horror of the helpless paralytic. A lump rose up in her throat, almost choking her, as she gasped: “Don’t tell me that Mr. Sherwood----” “Forgive me for alarming you--I read your thought--he is safe.” “Thank Heaven!” she breathed, clasping her little hands in joy; and the doctor continued: “He was saved by the heroism of a gentleman staying in the house, who carried him out through smoke and flame, in his arms. But here is the paper. You can read it for yourself. Very short, but I suppose the morning papers will give us full particulars.” The tears sprang to her eyes, almost blinding her, as she grasped the paper and devoured the short paragraph from New York: The elegant Fifth Avenue house of the millionaire, Royall Sherwood, was burned to the ground this morning just before daylight, by a fire whose origin could not be discovered. Mr. Sherwood, who is a helpless cripple, must have perished in the flames but for the heroism of a Mr. Raymond, his private secretary, who carried his employer out in his arms through dense fire and smoke at the peril of his life, and sustained fatal injuries in the performance of his noble act. “Oh!” gasped Annette; and there rushed over her memory the last words she had heard from Ray Dering’s lips. It was when they were leaving New York that day when Daisie had turned to him in the hall and begged him not to let Royall miss her, but to try to make him happy, he had answered so earnestly: “Have no fears, dear madam--I will devote my life to him.” To Annette he had bowed, without a word, feeling that she preferred it so; but the sad, yearning glance of his fine dark eyes had haunted her painfully ever since. “I will devote my life to him,” he had promised; and in those two words, “fatal injuries,” Annette read the story of that devotion. Freely, gladly he had sacrificed himself in atonement for the wrong he had unwittingly done Royall Sherwood in a moment of jealous rage and madness. Something seemed to snap asunder in Annette’s tortured heart, and she astonished the good old doctor by sinking back unconscious in her chair. “Good gracious, what a nervous little thing!” he ejaculated, hastening to apply restoratives; and when she opened her eyes presently he exclaimed: “Tut, tut! You are too tender-hearted.” “Oh, you do not know--you do not understand,” shuddered Annette, leaning her little dark head against the windowpane. At that moment the rumble of carriage wheels stopping at the gate drew her attention down into the street. She started in wonder, and swept her hand across her eyes, as if to clear their vision, exclaiming: “I must be dreaming! This cannot be reality!” The old doctor was looking, too, and he blurted out, in amazement: “Bless my heart! If that is not Royall Sherwood stepping out of the carriage, too, with two strong legs as limber as mine. It’s a miracle!”