her people in the world like
them she wondered--so kind and simple and unfeignedly glad to take a
stranger into their home and a queer, mysterious, sick stranger at that!

"If I have to begin living all over just like a baby I think I am the
luckiest girl that ever was to be able to start in a place like this with
such dear, kind people all around me," she told Doctor Holiday, senior,
to whom she had immediately lost her heart as soon as she saw his smile
and felt the touch of his strong, magnetic, healing hand.

"We will get you out under the trees in a day or two," he said. "And then
your business will be to get well and strong as soon as possible and not
worry about anything any more than if you were the baby you were just
talking about. Can you manage that, young lady?"

"I'll try. I would be horrid and ungrateful not to when you are all so
good to me. I don't believe my own people are half as nice as you
Holidays. I don't see how they could be."

The doctor laughed at that.

"We will let it go at that for the present. You will be singing another
tune when your Geoffrey Annersley comes up the Hill to claim you."

The girl's expressive face clouded over at that. She did not quite dare
to tell Doctor Holiday as she had his nephew that she did not want to see
Geoffrey Annersley nor to have to know she was married to him. It sounded
horrid, but it was true. Sometimes she hated the very thought of Geoffrey
Annersley.

Later Doctor Holiday and his nephew went over the girl's case together
from both the personal and professional angles. There was little enough
to go on in untangling her mystery. The railway tickets which had been
found in her purse were in an un-postmarked envelope bearing the name
Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley, but no address. The baggage train had been
destroyed by fire at the time of the accident, so there were no trunks to
give evidence. The small traveling bag she had carried with her bore
neither initial nor geographical designation, and contained nothing which
gave any clew as to its owner's identity save that she was presumably a
person of wealth, for her possessions were exquisite and obviously
costly. A small jewel box contained various valuable rings, one or two
pendants and a string of matched pearls which even to uninitiated eyes
spelled a fortune. Also, oddly enough, among the rest was an absurd
little childish gold locket inscribed "Ruth from Geoffrey."

She had worn no rings at all except