It only required such a hint as that which had come from George Holland to set her smoldering suspicion—­suspicion of a suspicion—­in a flame.  It had flamed up before him in those words which she had spoken to him.  If Ella were guilty, he, George Holland, was to be held responsible for her guilt.

But Ella was not guilty; Herbert Courtland was not guilty.

“No, no, no!” she cried, in the solitude of her chamber.  “She did not talk as a guilty woman would talk; and he—­he went straight out of the room where I had told him what Mrs. Haddon said about his mother, his sister—­straight aboard the yacht; and she——­”

All at once the truth flashed upon her; the truth—­she felt that it was the truth; and both of them were guiltless.  It was for Herbert Courtland that Ella had put on that lovely dress; but she was guiltless, he was guiltless. (Curiously enough, she felt quite as happy in the thought that he was guiltless.) Yes, Ella had come to her wearing that dress instead of waiting for him, and he——­Ah, she now knew what he had meant when he had called her his good angel.  She had saved him.

She flung herself on her knees in a passion of thanksgiving to God for having made her the means of saving a soul from hell—­yes, for the time being.

And then she began to think what she should do in order that that soul should be saved forever.

It was time for her to dress for dinner before she had finished working out that great question, possibly the greatest question that ever engrossed the attention of a young woman:  how to save the soul of a man, not temporarily, but eternally.

And all the time that she was in her room alone she had not a single thought regarding the scene through which she had passed with the Rev. George Holland.  She had utterly forgotten him and his wickedness—­his vain sophistries.  She had forgotten all that he had said to her—­his monstrous calumny leveled against her dearest friend; she even forgot her unjust treatment of George Holland and her rudeness—­her unparalleled rudeness toward him.  She was thinking over something very much more important.  What was a question of mere etiquette compared to the question of saving a man’s soul alive?

But when she dined opposite to her father it was to the visit of George Holland she referred rather than to the visit of Herbert Courtland.

“What had George Holland got to say that was calculated to interest you?” her father inquired.  The peaches were on the table and the servant had, of course, left the room.

“He had nothing to say of interest to me,” she replied.

“Nothing, except, of course, that his respectful aspiration to marry you——­” suggested Mr. Ayrton.

“You need not put the ‘except’ before that, my papa,” said she.

“And yet I have for some years been under the impression that even when a man whom she recoils from marrying talks to a young woman about his aspirations in the direction of marriage, she is more interested than she would be when the man whom she wishes to marry talks on some other topic.”