l bat squeaking at
a mighty hawk. "Indeed! I fancy you will find that a rather difficult
matter!" he answered, contemptuously. "She is one of our best nurses!
James!" to a passing assistant, "escort this person and
her--belongings"--looking doubtfully at the mess on the floor--"down to
the street!"

Then he swiftly entered Bonnie's room, closing and fastening the door
behind him.

The said James, with an ill-concealed grin, stooped to his task; and
thus, in mortification, wrath, and ignominy, did Gila descend to her
waiting limousine.

There were tears of anger on her cheeks as she sat back against her
cushions; more tears fell, which, regardless of her pearly complexion,
she wiped away with a cobweb of a handkerchief, while she sat and hated
Courtland, and the whole tribe of college men, her cousin Bill Ward
included, for getting her into a scrape like this. Defeat was a thing
she could not brook. She had never, since she came out of short frocks,
been so defeated in her life! But it should not be defeat! She would
take her full revenge for all that had happened! Courtland should bite
the dust! She would show him that he could not go around picking up
stray beauties and sending her after them to pet them for him.

She did not watch for acquaintances during that ride home. She remained
behind drawn curtains. Arrived at home, she stormed up to her room,
giving orders to her maid not to disturb her, and sat down angrily to
indite an epistle to Courtland that should bring him to his knees.

Meantime the doctor and nurse worked silently, skilfully over Bonnie
until the weary eyes opened once more, and a long-drawn sigh showed that
the girl had come back to the world.

By and by, when the doctor had gone out of the room and the nurse had
finished giving her the beef-tea that had been ordered, Bonnie raised
her eyes. "Would you mind finding out for me just what this room costs?"
she asked, wearily.

The nurse had been fixing it all up in her mind what she should say when
this question came. "Why, I'm under the impression you won't have to pay
anything," she said, pleasantly. "You see, sometimes patients, when they
go out, are kind of grateful and leave a sort of endowment of a bed for
a while, or something like that, for cases just like yours, where
strangers come in for a few days and need quiet--real quiet that they
can't get in the ward, you know. I believe some one paid something for
this room in some kind of a w