before he proposed to
me. He was sure I would say yes. He is a wonderful mind-reader and
believes in mysteries and Fate. He said the minute he saw me he knew I
was his Fate."

Once more the modest Sadie was in a state bordering on conflagration.
Helen's eye sobered as she looked at and beyond Sadie.

"That was the very thing Travers Gladwin--I mean the real one--said to
me," she mused.

"He did!"

"Yes, and the way things have turned out it would seem"----

Helen stopped and covered her face with her hands. Sadie ran to her
and put her arms about her.

"You are going to help us, aren't you, Helen dear?" said Sadie,
tremulously. "I would tell Auntie about it only she would want a
tremendous wedding and all that. Whitney and I both hate big weddings.
I am too timid and he is too nervous--says he might swallow the ring
and choke to death. You will now, Helen darling?"

There was a little sob in Sadie's voice and Helen surrendered.

"You are doing a very rash thing, Sadie," Helen lectured, striving
to draw her brows into an expression of impressive solemnity. "My
own terrible experience should have been a lesson to you--a
warning--a"----

"But it was Whitney Barnes who saved you, Helen!" cried Sadie,
exultantly. "You owe it all to him and that is why I began to love
him!"

"Nonsense!" retorted Helen sharply. "Mr. Barnes had nothing whatever
to do with it. All he did was to get himself handcuffed and run about
absurdly trying to be unlocked."

"But he was on watch and planned and planned," Sadie defended her
hero.

"Sadie Burton, I say that Whitney Barnes had nothing whatever to do
with it. He was merely an instrument. Travers Gladwin did it all. I
owe everything to him--_everything_! He would have gone to jail for
me, sacrificed all his wonderful paintings--oh, Sadie, it was
wonderful of him!"

It was Sadie who was thunderstruck now by the ardor in her cousin's
voice. Her amazement soon gave way to a beaming smile, and she mumbled
as she turned to her dressing table, "I do believe she is in love with
him."

CHAPTER XLIV.

MISS FEATHERINGTON'S SHATTERED DREAM.

Marietta Featherington couldn't seem to concentrate her mind upon that
thirteenth chapter of "Lily the Lovely Laundress." The handsome
rat-catcher had just beaten the aristocratic villain to a pulp and
would have finished the job neatly and thoroughly had not Lily raised
her lovely fair hand and cried with the imperiousness of an empre