“I shall not doubt.”  She held out her hand frankly.  “You believe in me now, Mr. Westcott?”

“Absolutely; indeed I think I always have.  That other thing hurt, yet I kept saying to myself, ‘She had some good reason.’”

“Always think so, please, no matter what happens.  I was nearly wild until I got the note to you; I was so afraid you would leave the hotel.  We must trust each other.”

He stood before her, his hat in hand, a strong, robust figure, his bronzed face clearly revealed; the sunlight making manifest the grey hair about his temples.  To Miss Donovan he seemed all man, instinct with character and purpose, a virile type of the out-of-doors.

“To the death,” and his lips and eyes smiled.  “I believe in you utterly.”

“Thank you.  Good-bye.”

He watched her climb the bank and emerge upon the bridge.  He still stood there, bare-headed, when she turned and smiled back at him, waving her hand.  Then the slender figure vanished, and he was left alone.  A moment later, Westcott was striding up the trail, intent upon a plan to entrap Lacy.

They would have felt less confident in the future could they have overheard a conversation being carried on in a room of the Timmons House.  It was Miss La Rue’s apartments, possessing two windows, but furnished in a style so primitive as to cause that fastidious young lady to burst into laughter when she first entered and gazed about.  Both her companions followed her, laden with luggage, and Beaton, sensing instantly what had thus affected her humour, dropped his bag on the floor.

“It’s the best there is here,” he protested.  “Timmons has held it for you three days.”

“Oh, I think it is too funny, Ned,” she exclaimed, staring around, and then flinging her wraps on the bed.  “Look at that mirror, will you, and those cracks in the wall?  Say, do I actually have to wash in that tin basin?  Lord!  I didn’t suppose there was such a place in the world.  Why, if this is the prize, what kind of a room have you got?”

“Tough enough,” he muttered gloomily, “but you was so close with your money I had to sing low.  What was the matter with you, anyhow?”

“Sweetie wouldn’t produce, or couldn’t, rather.  He hasn’t got his hands on much of the stuff yet.  Enright coughed up the expense money, or most of it.  I made John borrow some, but I needed that myself.”

“Well, damn little got out here, and Lacy pumped the most of that out of me.  However, if you feel like kicking about this room, you ought to see some of the others—­mine, for instance, or the one Timmons put that other woman in.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, finding a seat and staring at him.  “That reminds me.  Did you say there was a girl here from New York?  Never mind quarrelling about the room, I’ll endure it all right; it makes me think of old times,” and she laughed mirthlessly.  “Sit down, Mr. Enright, and let’s talk.  How’s the door, Ned?”