terious excitement that seemed to possess everybody around me.

Finally one morning, Lillian came to me, her face shining.

"I want you to prepare to be very brave, Madge," she said. "There is
some one coming whom I fear it will tax all your strength to meet."

"Dicky!" I faltered, beginning to tremble.

"No, child, not yet," she said, her voice filled with pity, "but
someone who has done you a great wrong, Grace Draper."

XLIII

"TAKE ME HOME"

"Grace Draper coming to see me!"

My echo of Lillian's words was but a trembling stammer. The prospect
of facing the girl the thread of whose sinister personality had so
marred the fabric of my marital happiness terrified me. Her message
to me, posted in San Francisco, where Dicky was, flaunted its insolent
triumph again before my eyes:

"She laughs best who laughs last."

That she had intended me to believe she was with Dicky, I knew,
whether her boast were true or not. But how was it that she was coming
to see me? Lillian put a reassuring hand upon my shoulder as she saw
my face.

"Pull yourself together, Madge," she admonished me sharply. "Let me
make this clear to you. Grace Draper is not in San Francisco now.
Whether she has been, or what she knows about Dicky she has refused so
far to say. She has finally consented to see you, however."

"But, how?" I murmured, bewildered.

"Do you remember the girl of whom Katherine spoke when she first came,
the girl who moaned at night in the room next hers?"

"Oh, yes! And she was--?"

"Grace Draper. I do not know what made me think of the Draper when
Katherine spoke of the girl, but I did, although I said nothing about
it at the time. A little later, however, when the girl became really
ill and Katherine was caring for her as a mother or a sister would
have done, I told our little friend of my suspicion. Of course,
Katherine watched her mysterious patient very carefully after that,
and when she became ill enough to require a physician's services,
Katharine managed it so that Dr. Pettit was called, and he recognized
the girl at once.

"Ever since then, Katherine has been working on the substitute for
honor and conscience which the Draper carries around with her--but
she was hard as nails for a long time. She is terribly grateful to
Katherine, however, as fond of her as she can be of anyone, and she
has finally consented to come here. Don't anger her if you can help
it."

When, a little later, Grace Draper