of blue, rose-leaf lips, teeth white as rice, a spot of red in her
cheeks--the last the fruit of fright, no doubt. He had never seen aught
so beautiful! Even while she was in his arms, the face fitted into his
heart like a picture into its frame, and Richard thought on that prophet
of Calicut.

"Are you injured?" he asked again.

"Thanks to you--no," said the girl.

With a kind of modest energy, she took herself out of his arms, for
Richard had held to her stoutly, and might have been holding her until
now had she not come to her own rescue. For all that, she had leisure to
admire the steel-like grasp and the deep, even voice. Her own words as
she replied came in gasps.

"No," she repeated, "I'm not injured. Help me to a seat."

The beautiful rescued one limped, and Richard turned white.

"Your ankle!" he exclaimed.

"No; my heel," she retorted with a little flutter of a laugh. "My French
heel caught on the stair; it was torn away. No wonder I limp!"

Then came the girl's mother and called her "Dorothy."

Richard, who was not without presence of mind, climbed six steps and
secretly made prize of the baby boot-heel. Perhaps you will think he did
this on the argument by which an Indian takes a scalp. Whatever the