For an instant Angela was tempted to answer:  “I’m too tired to see any one this evening.”  But that would be cowardly.  Besides, she was curious to see her visitor, whoever it might be.

“The lady’s waiting in the veranda now,” said a hotel clerk.  “She’s been here ever since morning, but she went away at lunch time and came back afterward.  I don’t know what she means to do to-night, for the train for Truckee will be leaving in a few minutes, and she hasn’t engaged a room.”

Angela went out on the veranda, feeling’ a little tense and excited, but when a small, blue-frocked, gray-hatted figure, dejectedly lost in a big rocking-chair, was pointed out to her, excitement died while bewilderment grew.

Her first thought was that she had never seen this countrified-looking person before, but as her guest turned, raising to hers a pair of singularly intelligent, rather frightened eyes, she knew that she had met the same glance from the same eyes somewhere before.

The little woman’s face was so pale, so tired, her whole personality so pathetic yet indomitable, that Angela’s heart softened.

“How do you do?” she asked kindly.  “I hear you have come to see me, so we must know each other, I’m sure——­”

The visitor was on her feet, the chair, from which she had sprung with a nervous jerk, rocking frantically as if a nervous ghost were sitting in it.

“We don’t know each other exactly,” Miss Wilkins hastened to explain, as though eager not to begin with false pretences.  “The only time you ever saw me was at Santa Barbara last May, but you were very good to me and—­and I found out your name——­”

“Of course.  I remember quite well!” Mrs. May smiled reassuringly, for the poor little thing was certainly terrified and ill at ease as well as tired.  Angela sprang to the conclusion that the young woman was in money difficulties, and having remembered the loan of the sitting-room at Santa Barbara had somehow found her way to Tahoe in the hope of getting help.  Well, she should have it.  Angela was only too glad to be able to do something for any one in trouble.  “I’m glad to see you again,” she said, as if it were quite a commonplace thing for a stranger to have dropped apparently from the clouds in search of her.  “But I’m so sorry you’ve had to wait.  Perhaps you wrote and I haven’t got the letter yet?”

“No, I didn’t write.  I couldn’t have explained in a letter,” said the weary-faced visitor; “and maybe you wouldn’t have wanted me to come if you’d known before-hand.  I thought if I’d travelled all this way though, just to speak to you, you wouldn’t refuse.  I’ve been two nights on the way.”

“Oh, how dreadful!” exclaimed Angela.  “You must let me get you a room at once.  Some people are leaving to-night.  They surely can put you up in the hotel.”

“Thank you very much,” returned the young woman, “but I couldn’t impose on you as your guest.  You’ll see that when I’ve told you why I came.  I can’t get away to Truckee, I know, for the train goes too soon, but I’ll take a room at some simpler place where it’s cheaper than this.”