was
relieved to find her still there, huddled into the shadow, her eyes
looking large and frightened. She was seized with a fit of trembling, and
it required all her strength to keep him from noticing it. She was half
afraid of the man, now that she had waited for him. Perhaps he was not a
gentleman, after all.

[Illustration]

II

"I am afraid I have been a long time," he said apologetically, as he
closed the door of the carriage, after giving Mrs. Parker Bowman's address
to the driver. In the uncertain light of the distant arc-lamp, the girl
looked small and appealing. He felt a strong desire to lift her burdens
and carry them on his own broad shoulders.

"I've brought some things that I thought might help," he said. "Would you
like to put on this coat? It may not be just what you would have selected,
but it was the best I could find that would not be recognized. The air is
growing chilly."

He shook out the coat and threw it around her.

"Oh, thank you," she murmured gratefully, slipping her arms into the
sleeves.

"And this box has some kind of a hat, I hope," he went on. "I ought to
have looked, but there really wasn't time." He unknotted the strings and
produced a large picture hat with long black plumes. He was relieved to
find it black. While he untied the strings, there had been a growing
uneasiness lest the hat be one of those wild, queer combinations of colors
that Cornelia frequently purchased and called "artistic."

The girl received the hat with a grateful relief that was entirely
satisfactory to the young man.

"And now," said he, as he pulled out the gloves and laid them gravely in
her lap, "we're invited out to dinner."

"Invited out to dinner!" gasped the girl.

"Yes. It's rather a providential thing to have happened, I think. The
telephone was ringing as I opened the door, and Mrs. Parker Bowman, to
whose house I was invited, was asking for my sister to fill the place of
an absent guest. My sister is away, and I tried to beg off. I told her I
had accidentally met--I hope you will pardon me--I called you a friend."

"Oh!" she said. "That was kind of you."

"I said you were a stranger in town, and as I was your only acquaintance,
I felt that I should show you the courtesy of taking you to a hotel, and
assisting to get you off on the night train; and I asked her to excuse me,
as that would give her an even number. But it seems she had invited some
one especially to meet me, and