By and by, when the doctor had gone out of the room and the nurse had finished giving her the beef-tea that had been ordered, Bonnie raised her eyes.  “Would you mind finding out for me just what this room costs?” she asked, wearily.

The nurse had been fixing it all up in her mind what she should say when this question came.  “Why, I’m under the impression you won’t have to pay anything,” she said, pleasantly.  “You see, sometimes patients, when they go out, are kind of grateful and leave a sort of endowment of a bed for a while, or something like that, for cases just like yours, where strangers come in for a few days and need quiet—­real quiet that they can’t get in the ward, you know.  I believe some one paid something for this room in some kind of a way like that.  I guess the doctor thought you would get well quicker if you had it quiet, so he put you in here.  You needn’t worry a bit about it.”

Bonnie smiled.  “Would you mind making sure?” she asked.  “I’d like to know just what I owe.  I have a little money, you know.”

The nurse nodded and slipped away to whisper the story to the grave doctor, who grew more indignant and contemptuous than he had been to Gila, and sent her promptly back with an answer.

“You don’t have to pay a cent,” she said, cheerfully, as she returned.  “This bed is endowed temporarily, the doctor says, to be used at his discretion, and he wants to keep you here till some one comes who needs this room more than you do.  At present there isn’t any one, so you needn’t worry.  We are not going to let any more little feather-headed spitfires in to see you, either.  The doctor balled the office out like everything for letting that girl up.”

Bonnie tried to smile again, but only ended in a sigh.  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said, and then, after a minute, “You’ve been very good to me.  Some time I hope I can do something for you.  Now I’m going to sleep.”

The nurse went out to look after some of her duties.  Half an hour later she came back to Bonnie’s room and entered softly, not to waken her.  She was worried lest she had left the window open too wide and the wind might be blowing on her, for it had turned a good deal colder since the sun went down.

She tiptoed to the bed and bent over in the dim light to see if her patient was all right.  Then she drew back sharply.

The bed was empty!

She turned on the light and looked all around.  There was no one else in the room!  Bonnie was gone!

CHAPTER XIII

Wildly the nurse searched the room, throwing open the wardrobe first!  Bonnie’s shabby clothes were no longer hanging on the hooks!  She rushed to the window and looked helplessly along the fire-escape out into the courtyard below, where the ambulance was just bringing in a fresh case.  There was no sign of her patient.  Turning back, she saw on the table a bit of paper from the daily record-sheet folded up and pinned together with a quaint little circle of old-fashioned gold in which were set tiny garnets and pearls.  The note was addressed, “Miss Wright, Nurse.”  A five-dollar bill fell from the paper.  The nurse picked it up and read: