Billie sat up.

“I’m all right now,” she said.  “It was only fright because I lost my way in the dark and couldn’t find the door, and it was so ghastly running into another person in the blackness like that.  Father, I wish you would tell them not to put out the lights in this room so early.  It’s the second time it’s happened now.”

“O’Haru, you hear what the lady says,” said Mr. Campbell half humorously.

Billie, knowing her father as she did, was suddenly aware that he was trying to make light of the affair for the benefit of the others in the room.  That the episode was far more serious than he cared to admit, she knew perfectly well.

O’Haru left the doorway where she had been standing and came over to the group by the couch.

“What was the honorable wish of the young lady?”

“Not to have the lights in the library put out so early in the evening.  To wait until bedtime at least.”

O’Haru disliked to contradict, but the august young lady was honorably mistaken.  The lights had never been put out by any servant attached to the household.  She herself, or her daughter, attended to that after the honorable family had retired for the night.

“Never mind,” said Mr. Campbell in a soothing voice, indicating to Billie by a slight shake of the head that he would be glad if she would let the matter drop.  Billie nodded.  There was perfect understanding between the father and the daughter.

“How do you feel now, Miss Billie?” asked Nicholas Grimm coming to the foot of the couch.

“I’m all right again.  I am ashamed of having been such a coward.  If it had been daylight I shouldn’t have been half so frightened.”

“I feel that it was all my fault for running off and leaving you alone.  I should have seen you to the house at least.”

“Nonsense,” said Billie.  “That wouldn’t have altered matters in the least.  I would have come back here just the same for the pistol.  You see I had a feeling that Papa might need it.  Besides, we were all alone here.  There were no men—­”

“I am only glad it was someone else that was shot and not you, my darling child,” broke in Miss Campbell tremulously.  “Duncan, I do wish you wouldn’t keep pistols lying around the house.  They are so dangerous.”

“But I don’t, Cousin.  It was carefully stored in the back compartment of a bottom desk drawer.  If this reckless young relative of ours would go and dig it out, I’m sure it’s not my fault.”

“I’m sure I can’t imagine why you treat the matter as such a joke,” Miss Campbell was saying, when Mme. Fontaine swept into the room.

Her face was whiter than the long white wrap that enveloped her.

“I am so glad you were not injured,” she said standing beside Billie.

“You must thank Mme. Fontaine, Billie.  It was she who found you first.  The rest of us were not certain in which room the shot was fired.  I thought it was in the kitchen.”