She stood still and covered her face with her hands. "God," she
said, "don't punish him! It's my fault; punish me."

Perhaps she had never really prayed before.




CHAPTER XX

Robert Ferguson, in his library, and poor Miss White in the hall,
listened with tense nerves for the wheels of the carriage that
was to bring David Richie "to breakfast."

"Send him in to me," Mr. Ferguson had said; and then had shut
himself into his library.

Miss White was quivering with terror when at last she heard the
carriage door bang. David came leaping up the steps, his face
rosy as a girl's in the raw morning air--it was a lowering Mercer
morning, with the street lamps burning at eight o'clock in a murk
of smoke and fog. He raked the windows with a smiling glance, and
then stood, laughing for sheer happiness, waiting for _her_
to open the door to him.

David had had a change of spirit, if not of mind, since he wrote
his eminently sensible letter to Elizabeth. He had been able to
scrape up enough money of his own to pay at least one of his
bills, and things had gone better with him at the hospital, so he