at eventful evening Mrs. Brent and Miss
Porter had seen Maidie comfortably bestowed in the big, broad,
cane-bottomed bed in her airy room, and had left her to all appearances
sleeping placidly towards eight o'clock, and then gone out to dinner.
Whatever the cause of her agitation on receiving at Brent's hands the
little card photograph of herself, it had subsided after a brief,
low-toned conference with Sandy, who quickly came and speedily hastened
away, and a later visit from Dr. Frank, whose placid, imperturbable,
restful ways were in themselves well-nigh as soothing as the
orange-flower water prescribed for her. Even the little night-light,
floating in its glass, had been extinguished when the ladies left her.

The room assigned to Marion was at the north-west corner of the house.
Its two front windows opened on the wide gallery, that in turn opened
out on the Bagumbayan parade. Its west windows, also two in number, were
heavily framed. There were sliding blinds to oppose to the westering
sun, translucent shells in place of brittle glass to temper, yet admit,
the daylight, and hanging curtains that slid easily on their supporting
rods and rendered the room dark as could be desired for the siesta hours
of the tropic day.

The dinner-table, brightly lighted by lamps hung from hooks securely
driven in the upper beams (lath and plaster are unknown in this seismic
land), was set on the rear gallery overlooking the _patio_, and here,
soon after eight, Brent, his little household, the doctor, and two
more guests were cosily chatting and dining, while noiseless native
servants hovered about and Maidie Ray presumably slept.

But Maidie was not sleeping. Full of a new anxiety, if not of dread, and
needing to think calmly and clearly, she had turned away from her almost
too assiduous attendants and closed her eyes upon the world about her. A
perplexity, a problem such as never occurred to her as a possibility,
one that sorely worried Sandy, as she could plainly see, had suddenly
been thrust upon her. Hitherto she had ever had a most devoted mother as
her counsellor and friend, but now a time had come when she must think
and act for herself.

The little card photograph picked up by the men on the scene of the
scuffle at the edge of the Bagumbayan had told its story to her at least
and to Sandy. It could only mean that Foster, he who spent whole days
and weeks at their New Mexican station to the neglect of his cattle-ranch,
h