g man. "I will deliver your message." He
held the heavy portieres back for Bab as she stepped into the hall and
accompanied her to the vestibule door. "Good-bye, Miss Thurston," he said
with a peculiar, meaning flash of his blue eyes that completed Bab's
discomfiture. "I shall hope to see you in a day or two."

Bab hurried down the steps and into the street. The shadows were
beginning to fall and in another hour it would be dark. When she reached
the corner she looked about her in bewilderment, then with a little
impatient exclamation she wheeled and retraced her steps. She had been
going in the wrong direction. She had passed Mrs. Wilson's house, when a
murmur of familiar voices caused her to start and look back at it in
amazement. Stepping off the walk and behind the trunk of a great tree,
Barbara stared from her place of concealment, hardly able to believe the
evidence of her own eyes. Peter Dillon was standing just outside the
vestibule door, his hat in his hand and just inside stood Mrs. Wilson.
The two were deep in conversation and Bab heard the young man's musical
laugh ring out as though something had greatly amused him. Filled with a
sickening apprehension that she was the cause of his laughter, Bab
stepped from behind the tree unobserved by the two on the step above and
walked on down the street assailed by the disquieting suspicion that Mrs.
Wilson had had a motive far from disinterested in lending her the fifty
dollars. She glanced down at the envelope in her hand. She felt positive
that it contained the money, and her woman's intuition told her that
Peter Dillon's presence in the house had not been a matter of chance. She
experienced a strong desire to run back to the house and return the
envelope unopened, and at the same time ask Mrs. Wilson why Peter had
untruthfully declared that she was not at home. Bab paused irresolutely.
Then a vision of Mollie's tearful face rose before her, and squaring her
shoulders, she marched along through the gathering twilight, determined
to use the borrowed money to pay Mollie's debt and face the consequences
whatever they might be.

When Bab reached home she found that Harriet had come in and gone to her
room, while the other girls had not yet returned. Barbara was glad that
no one had discovered her absence, and divesting herself of her hat and
coat she hurried up to her room. Closing and locking the door, she sat
down and tore open the envelope and with hands that trembl