Sheila kept the night watches alone.  She went to bed, but the lids of her eyes could not close.  Sleep was as far from her as heaven itself.  She went over the entire happenings of the previous afternoon and evening with care, giving to each incident its rightful importance, judging the weight of each word said, each look granted her.  Did the Balls suspect her in the least?  Had the story Ida May Bostwick told made any real impression upon their minds?

No!  She finally told herself that thus far she was secure.  Ida May must bring something besides assertion to influence the minds of the two old people.  And if she had had documentary proof in her possession yesterday, the new claimant would have shown it.

Nobody carries about with him birth certificate or memoranda of identification and relationship.  If Ida May had been warned of what she was to meet at the old house on Wreckers’ Head, without doubt she would have tried to equip herself in some such way for the interview.

It might be very difficult for the girl to obtain any evidence that would assure the Balls of her actual relationship to them.  Sheila had foreseen this possibility from the first.  She was still quite determined to hold on, to make the other girl do all the talking and all the proving.  She herself would rest upon the foundation of her establishment in the place Ida May Bostwick claimed.

The latter certainly could not know Sheila’s true history.  Sheila was as much a stranger to Ida May as she had been to the Balls when Tunis had brought her to Wreckers’ Head.

And then, suddenly, a thought seared through the girl’s mind.  Something that Ida May Bostwick had said just before Tunis hurried her out of the house!

“I believe I’ve seen her before.  Somehow, she looks familiar.”

These two sentences, spoken in Ida May’s sneering way, had made little impression on the excited Sheila at the time they were spoken.  But now they made the girl’s heart beat wildly.

Suppose it were true!  Suppose Ida May should really remember who Sheila was?  It was not impossible that the girl from the lace counter of Hoskin & Marl’s knew of Sheila’s disgrace.

Sleep was not within her reach.  The long hours of the night dragged past.  Dimly dawn crept along the dark line of the horizon, circling all her world as far as Sheila could see it from her bed.  But it was still dark below her north window when she caught the sound of a familiar step, the crunch of gravel under Tunis’ boot.

She lay shaking for a moment, holding her breath.  She heard the tiny pebbles rattle upon the window sill.  For the first time she had not been downstairs to greet Tunis on his way to the port.  Could she let him go now without a word?

But she must!  She must be firm.

Nevertheless, she slipped softly out of bed.  The pebbles rattled again.  She caught up a dark veil from her bureau and wrapped it about her face.  She crept to the north window.  The veil would mask her face so that he could not distinguish it in the shadow.