e
than I do?" asked Miss Grayson with unconcealed sarcasm.

Prescott saw that her courage was now getting the better of her
timidity. He hesitated and felt his cheeks redden.

"I do not know," he was forced to reply.

Miss Grayson's gaze became steady and triumphant.

"Does it not then occur to you, Captain Prescott, that you are
proceeding upon a very slender basis when you doubt my word?"

"It is hardly that, Miss Grayson," he replied. "I thought--perhaps--that
it might be an evasion, pardonable when it is made for a friend whom one
thinks in danger."

His eye roamed around the room again and it caught sight of something
disclosed to him for the first time by the sudden increase of the
flickering blaze on the hearth. A flash of triumph appeared in his eye
and his boldness and certainty returned to him.

"Miss Grayson," he said, "it is true that I do not know the name of the
lady of whom I speak, but I have some proof of her presence here."

Miss Grayson started and her lips began to tremble again.

"I do not know what you mean," she said.

"I ask for the wearer of this," said Prescott, taking a long brown cloak
from the chair on which it lay and holding it up before Miss Grayson's
eyes.

"Then you ask for me," she replied bravely; "the cloak is mine."

"I have seen it several times before," said Prescott, "and it was always
worn by some one else."

He looked significantly at her and he saw again the nervous trembling of
the lip, but her eye did not quail. This woman, with her strange
mingling of timidity and courage, would certainly protect the unknown if
she could.

"The cloak is mine," she repeated. "It is a question of veracity between
you and me, and are you prepared to say that you alone tell the truth?"

Prescott hesitated, not fancying this oblique method of attack, but a
third person relieved them both from present embarrassment. A door to an
inner apartment opened, and the woman in brown--but not in brown
now--came into the room.

"You need not conceal my presence any longer, Charlotte," said the
newcomer impressively. "I thank you, but I am sure that we need no
protection from Captain Prescott."

"If you think so, Lucia," replied Miss Grayson, and Prescott distinctly
heard her sigh of relief--a sigh that he could have echoed, as he had
begun to feel as if he were acting not as a gentleman, but as a
persecutor of a poor old maid. The girl--Lucia was her first name, he
had learned that mu