“The poor child!” said Nurse Wright, with tears in her kind, keen eyes.  “And she left her last cent here to pay for her room!  My!  When I think of it I could choke that smart young snob that called on her in the afternoon!  You ought to have heard her sneers and her insinuations.  Women like that are a blight on womanhood!  And she dared to mention your name—­said you had sent her!”

The color heightened in Courtland’s face.  He felt uncomfortable.  “Why, I—­didn’t exactly send her,” he began, uneasily.  “I don’t really know her very well.  You see, I’m just a student at the university and of course I don’t know a great many girls in the city.  I thought it would be nice if some girl would call on Miss Brentwood; she seemed so alone.  I thought another girl would understand and be able to comfort her.”

“She isn’t a girl, that’s what’s the matter with her; she’s a little demon!” snapped the nurse.  “You meant well, and I dare say she never showed you the demon side of her.  Girls like that don’t—­to young men.  But if you take my advice you won’t have anything more to do with her!  She isn’t worth it!  She may be rich and fashionable and all that, but she can’t hold a candle to Miss Brentwood!  If you had just heard how she went on, with her nasty little chin in the air and her nasty phrases and insinuations, and her patronage!  And then Miss Brentwood’s gentle, refined way of answering her!  But never mind, I won’t go into that!  It might take me all night, and I’ve got to go back to my patient.  But you are not to blame yourself one particle.  I hope Miss Brentwood’s going to get through this all right in a few days, and she’ll probably have forgotten all about it, so don’t you worry.  I think it would be a good thing if you were to come in and see her to-morrow afternoon a few minutes.  It might cheer her up.  You really have been fine, you know!  No telling where she might have been by this time if you hadn’t gone out after her!”

The young man shuddered involuntarily, and thought of the faces of the five young fellows who had surrounded her.

“I saw a little girl in the morgue to-night, drowned!” he said, irrelevantly.  “She wasn’t any older than Miss Brentwood.”

The nurse gave an understanding look.  On her way back to her rounds she said to herself:  “I believe he’s a real man!  If I hadn’t thought so I wouldn’t have told him he might come and see her to-morrow!”

Then she went into Bonnie’s room, took the letter with the Western postmark, and stood it up against a medicine-glass on the little table beside the bed, where Bonnie could see it the first thing when she opened her eyes.

CHAPTER XVI

A little after four o’clock, when Courtland came plodding up the hall of the dormitory to his room, a head was stuck out of Tennelly’s door, followed by Tennelly’s shoulders attired in a bath-robe.  The hair on the head was much tumbled and the eyes were full of sleep.  Moreover, there was an anxious, relieved frown on the brows.