“Caroline!” murmured the one.

“Alicia!” pleaded the other.

“Caroline, trust me,” said Alicia Driscoll in that moving voice of hers, which more than her beauty caught and retained all hearts.  “You have served me ill, but it was not all undeserved.  Girls,” she went on, eyeing both them and her father with the wistfulness of a breaking heart, “neither Caroline nor myself are worthy of Captain Holliday’s love.  Caroline has told you her fault, but mine is perhaps a worse one.  The ring—­the scarf—­the diamond pins—­I took them all—­took them if I did not retain them.  A curse has been over my life—­the curse of a longing I could not combat.  But love was working a change in me.  Since I have known Captain Holliday—­but that’s all over.  I was mad to think I could be happy with such memories in my life.  I shall never marry now—­or touch jewels again—­my own or another’s.  Father, father, you won’t go back on your girl!  I couldn’t see Caroline suffer for what I have done.  You will pardon me and help—­help—­”

Her voice choked.  She flung herself into her father’s arms; his head bent over hers, and for an instant not a soul in the room moved.  Then Miss Hughson gave a spring and caught her by the hand.  “We are inseparable,” said she, and kissed the hand, murmuring, “Now is our time to show it.”

Then other lips fell upon those cold and trembling fingers, which seemed to warm under these embraces.  And then a tear.  It came from the hard eye of Caroline, and remained a sacred secret between the two.

“You have your pendant?”

Mr. Driscoll’s suffering eye shone down on Violet Strange’s uplifted face as she advanced to say good-bye preparatory to departure.

“Yes,” she acknowledged, “but hardly, I fear, your gratitude.”

And the answer astonished her.

“I am not sure that the real Alicia will not make her father happier than the unreal one has ever done.”

“And Captain Holliday?”

“He may come to feel the same.”

“Then I do not quit in disgrace?”

“You depart with my thanks.”

When a certain personage was told of the success of Miss Strange’s latest manoeuvre, he remarked:  “The little one progresses.  We shall have to give her a case of prime importance next.”

END OF PROBLEM I

PROBLEM II

THE SECOND BULLET

“You must see her.”

“No.  No.”

“She’s a most unhappy woman.  Husband and child both taken from her in a moment; and now, all means of living as well, unless some happy thought of yours—­some inspiration of your genius—­ shows us a way of re-establishing her claims to the policy voided by this cry of suicide.”

But the small wise head of Violet Strange continued its slow shake of decided refusal.

“I’m sorry,” she protested, “but it’s quite out of my province.  I’m too young to meddle with so serious a matter.”