ing to help me?'

'I?' she hesitated. 'How?'

'This young man knows you. Do you not know him?'

'I--almost believe so.'

'And--are you under any vow or promise of secrecy? He lies there,
unknown, friendless; and he has an enemy near at hand. I want to serve
him, but to do this intelligently I must know him.'

She hesitated a moment, and then, to my surprise, arose quite calmly,
went to her desk, and came back with a photograph in her hand.

'Look at that,' she said, as she held it out to me.

It was a group of tennis-players upon a sunlit lawn, one of those
instantaneous pictures in which amateurs delight; but it was clear and
the faces were very distinct. One of them I recognised at once as the
subject of our conversation. He wore in the picture a light tennis
suit, and his handsome head was bare; but I knew the face at once, and
told her so.

'That,' she said, 'is a picture of a Mr. Lossing, whom I knew quite
well for a season in New York. Shortly before Lent he left the city,
it was said, and I have heard and known nothing of him since.'

'And--pardon me--it's very unusual for a young man of society to take
up the work he has chosen. Do you know any reason for this?'

'None whatever. He seemed to be well supplied with money. So far as I
can judge, I confess I never thought before of his fortune or lack of
it.' A sudden flush mantled her face, and her eyes dropped. I wondered
if she was thinking of that letter to Hilda O'Neil.

'It's a delicate point,' I said musingly. 'If we could learn something
of his situation. He is very proud. Do you think that your friend,
Monsieur Voisin, might possibly know something----'

She put up her hand quickly, imperiously.

'If Mr. Lossing has chosen to conceal himself from his friends, we
have no right to make his presence here known to Monsieur Voisin.' She
checked herself and coloured beautifully again.

'You are right,' I said promptly. I had no real thought of asking
Monsieur Voisin into our councils, and I had now verified the
suspicions I had held from the first--fitting the guard's statement
and his personality into the story her letter told--that he was the
Mr. Lossing from whom she had parted so stormily in the conservatory
on the night of her aunt's reception.

And now, as I consulted my watch, she leaned toward me, and suddenly
threw aside her reserve.

'Can you guess,' she asked eagerly, 'how he came to meet those women
in that way? It was a meeting, w