charie, who stood
staring with his black, piercing eyes and sardonic smile, silently
studying her. For a moment she stared back at him, without making a
movement or a sound. A look of repulsion and fright came into her face.
Suddenly she uttered a shriek:

"The man of my dreams!" she cried.

Then she fainted again.

Dr. Zacharie put his finger on her pulse and turned to Tod. It seemed to
the latter that a smile of satisfaction hovered about his mouth.

"She's a highly nervous girl," he said, "and subject to strange
hallucinations. I am a nerve specialist. Cases like this interest me.
Her condition is well known to her uncle. He asked me to call and see
her. It is a curious coincidence that I should meet her under these
tragic circumstances. You had better get her home at once. My automobile
is at your disposal."

CHAPTER XII.

Three weeks passed and Paula still felt the terrible shock of little
Annie's death. The sad affair had made such an impression on her
sensitive nature that she was compelled to give up her Settlement work
temporarily if not altogether. For days she was haunted by the wretched
mother's agonized face; that shrill scream of despair still rang in her
ears.

For some time she had been thinking of leaving town and going somewhere
for a rest. Certainly she needed it. Her nerves were all unstrung; she
felt more low-spirited and depressed than ever. With her music and her
books she tried to shake off the melancholy that weighed upon her, but
without much success. The book dropped from her listless hands and she
found herself incapable even of thinking, her mind constantly filled
with a vague, indefinable feeling of uneasiness.

Both Mr. Ricaby and Tod tried their best to cheer her up, insisting that
there was nothing to worry about. It was ten months now since her uncle
was appointed administrator of her estate. In two months more his
guardianship would be at an end, and she would be legally entitled to
come into her own. Yet, in spite of this reassurance, strange misgivings
seized the girl. What new move were her uncle and Bascom Cooley
contemplating? She had heard nothing of them for weeks, but that in
itself meant nothing. Under the peculiar circumstances, such silence
was, perhaps, all the more suspicious.

Why had her uncle spoken to this Dr. Zacharie, the nerve specialist,
about her? How frightened she had been that fatal afternoon in Mrs.
Hughes' attic when she first saw the doct