od.

"Is she dreadfully hurt?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Alive?"

He nodded. The girl lay still an instant, then she threw one arm
across her eyes, and Jarvis saw that she was softly sobbing. He
watched her for a little, then he took her other hand in his, holding
it close and tenderly, as one would soothe an unhappy child.

"When I have taken you home," he said, very gently, "I will come back
to Betty."

She drew her hand away quickly. "Take me home now," she whispered.

So Jarvis, as best he could, took her home. It was a hard journey,
which he would have made easier for her if he could have got her to
lean against him. But she sat erect, holding herself with a white face
and compressed lips, and Jarvis, thinking things he dared not put into
words, drove with as little jolt and jar as might be back to the
Hempstead Farms.

Joe, coming across the barnyard, saw them, looked at them a second
time, and strode hurriedly forward. Jarvis would have given the horses
into his charge and looked after the girl himself, but she forestalled
him, and it was Joe, the man of overalls and wide straw hat, who
helped her to her room, the porch being for the moment mercifully
bereft of boarders. It was the sunny hour of the morning there.

But presently she sent for him. He went at once, for he was preparing,
with Joe, to go to the injured horse. Mrs. Hempstead took him to Miss
Farnsworth's room, and stayed stiffly by while he crossed to the bed
where the girl lay, still in her riding habit. As he came to her she
held out her hand.

"Please forgive me," she said, with her head turned away. "I might
have killed--you."

"No--you couldn't. I've something to live for, so I'm
invulnerable--till I get it."

"Will you do something for me?" she asked. As she lay, with her head
turned from him, the warm white curves at the back of her neck
appealed to him more irresistibly than ever.

"Anything!"

She thrust one hand down under the folds of her skirt, drew out
something heavy and shining which had lain there, and put it into his
hand. Then she buried her face in the pillow. "Please----" she
began--and could not finish.

Jarvis looked around at his landlady, standing by like the embodiment
of propriety. He turned again to the girlish figure shaking with its
passionate regret. Then he took the little revolver from her, bent and
whispered, "I understand," and went quickly and silently away.

* * * * *