rned really
faint and helpless.

It was all over. He was beside her.

"What is the matter, Ray? Are you ill? Are you hurt?" he said,
quickly, stooping down to lift her up. She sat up, then, on the
stair. She could not stand.

A man's step came rapidly through the lower hall, ringing upon the
solid floor, and sounding through the unfurnished house.

"Sunderline! Thank heaven, sir, you're safe! Do you know how near
you were to backing out of that confounded window? I saw you from
the outside. In the name of goodness, have that place boarded up
again! It shouldn't be left for five minutes."

"Was _that_ it?" asked Frank, still bending over Ray, while Mr.
Newrich said all this as he hurried up the stairs.

"I didn't fall, I tumbled down on purpose! It was the only thing I
could think of," said Ray, nervously smiling; justifying herself,
instinctively, from the betrayal of a feeling that makes girls faint
away in novels. "I felt weak afterward. Anybody would."

"That's a fact," said Mr. Newrich, stopping at the landing, and
glancing out through the aperture. "I shall never think of it,
without shivering. You were as good as gone: a hair's breadth more
would have done it. God bless my soul! If my place had had such a
christening as that!"

The whiteness came over Ray Ingraham's face again She was just
rising to her feet, with her hand upon the rail.

"Sit still," said Frank. "Let me go and bring you some water."

"She'll feel better to be by herself a minute or two, I dare say,"
said Mr. Newrich, following Frank as he went down. He had the tact
to think of this, but not to go without saying it.

"A quick-witted young woman," he remarked, as they passed out of her
hearing. "And sensible enough to keep her wits ahead of her
feelings. If she had come _at_ you, as half the women in the world
would have done, you'd be a dead man this minute. Your sister,
Sunderline?"

"No, sir--only a friend."

"Ah! _onlier_ than a sister, may be? Well!"

Sunderline replied nothing, beyond a look.

"I beg your pardon. It's none of my business."

"It's none of my business, so far as I know," said Frank. "If it
were, there would be no pardon to beg."

"You're a fine fellow; and she's a fine girl. I suppose I may say
that. I tell you what; if you _had_ come to grief, at the very end
of this job you've done so well for me, I believe I should have put
the place under the hammer. I couldn't have begun with such a piece
of Friday