“The wires are evidently crossed somewhere,” he said calmly. “My Olivia Armstrong is a droll child from Cincinnati, whose escapades caused her to be sent home for discipline to-day. She’s a little mite who just about comes to the lapel of your coat, her eyes are as black as midnight—”

“Then she didn’t talk to Pickering and his friends at the station this morning—the prettiest girl in the world—gray hat, gray coat, blue eyes ? You can have your Olivia; but who, will you tell me, is mine ?”

I pounded with my clenched hand on the table until the candles rattled and sputtered.

Stoddard stared at me for a moment as though he thought I had lost my wits. Then he lay back in his chair and roared. I rose, bending across the table toward him in my eagerness. A suspicion had leaped into my mind, and my heart was pounding as it roused a thousand questions.

“The blue-eyed young woman in gray? Bless your heart, man, Olivia is a child; I talked to her myself on the platform. You were talking to Miss Devereux. She isn’t Olivia, she’s Marian !”

“Then, who is Marian Devereux—where does she live—what is she doing here—?”

“Well,” he laughed, “to answer your questions in order, she’s a young woman; her home is New York ; she has no near kinfolk except Sister Theresa, so she spends some of her time here.”

“Teaches—music—”

“Not that I ever heard of ! She does a lot of things well,—takes cups in golf tournaments and is the nimblest hand at tennis you ever saw. Also, she’s a fine musician and plays the organ tremendously.”

“Well, she told me she was Olivia!” I said.

“I should think she would, when you refused to meet her; when you had ignored her and Sister Theresa,—both of them among your grandfather’s best friends, and your nearest neighbors here !”

“My grandfather be hanged ! Of course I couldn’t know her ! We can’t live on the same earth. I’m in her way, hanging on to this property here just to defeat her, when she’s the finest girl alive !”

He nodded gravely, his eyes bent upon me with sympathy and kindness. The past events at Glenarm swept through my mind in kinetoscopic flashes, but the girl in gray talking to Arthur Pickering and his friends at the Annandale station, the girl in gray who had been an eavesdropper at the chapel,—the girl in gray with the eyes of blue ! It seemed that a year passed before I broke the silence.

“Where has she gone ?” I demanded.

He smiled, and I was cheered by the mirth that showed in his face.

“Why, she’s gone to Cincinnati, with Olivia Gladys ” he said. “They’re great chums, you Armstrong, know !”

CHAPTER XVII

SISTER THERESA