“I never saw ’em.  But I’ve heard a lot about ’em,” said the stranger, with a light laugh.  “They are sort of relations of mine.”

“You are a relative?” asked the girl.  Even then she had no thought of who this newcomer was.  “Cap’n Ira’s relative?  Or Mrs. Ball’s, if I may ask?”

“Well, I guess it is the old woman’s.  But I’m kind of curious to see ’em first, you know, before I make any strong play in the relationship game.  Gee!  Is this the parlor furniture?”

“Some of it,” was the wondering rejoinder.

“Looks like the house, don’t it?  Down at the heel and shabby.  Say, have they got much money, after all—­them Balls?  You’re a neighbor, I suppose?  You must know ’em well.”

“I live here,” said the other girl rather sternly.

“Huh?  You mean around here?”

“I live here with Cap’n Ira and Mrs, Ball,” was the further explanation.

“You do?  You?”

Her voice suddenly became shrill.  It rose half an octave with surprise.  Her gaze, which had merely been insolent, now became suspicious.  She scrutinized Sheila closely.

“I didn’t know the Balls had anybody living with ’em,” she resumed at length.  “You ain’t been here long, have you?”

“Oh, for some time,” was the cheerful rejoinder.

“They hire you?”

“Not—­not exactly.  You see, I am sort of related to them, too.”

“A relation of this old Cap’n Ira?”

“Of Mrs. Ball.”

“Huh!  Say, what’s you name?”

“My name is Bostwick,” was the composed reply.  “You did not mention yours, did you?”

“Bostwick?”

“They call me Ida May Bostwick,” said Sheila, demurely smiling, and even then without a suspicion of the vortex into which she was being drawn.

“Ida May Bostwick!”

The visitor rose out of her seat as though a spring had been released under her.  Her eyes flattened, distended, and sparked like micaceous rock in the dark.  Her hands clenched till the pointed, highly polished nails bit into the palms.

“What do you say? You are Ida May Bostwick?”

At that moment Sheila Macklin saw the light.  It smote upon her brain like a shaft from a great searchlight; a penetrating, cleaving beam that might have laid bare her very soul before the accusing stranger.  She staggered, retreating, shrinking, but only for a moment.

The pallor that had come into her face left it.  Color rose softly under the exquisite skin and there came a haughty uplift of her chin.  She stared back into the blazing, greenish-brown eyes of the other, her own eyes unafraid, challenging.

“Do you doubt me?” she demanded, with as much composure as though a secure position and a conscience quite at ease were hers.  “Who are you?  In what way are you interested in my name or in my identity?”

“Why, you—­you—­” The visitor was for the moment stricken speechless.  But it was the speechlessness of rage—­of wild and uncontrollable fury.  Then she caught her breath.  “You dirty cheat, you!  You stand there and tell me you are Ida Bostwick?  You’ve got gall—­you certainly have got gall!