"Then I guess I'll have to take her up," said the officer; "she answers all the requirements. I've got a warrant for her arrest."
"Arrest!" gasped Benson. "What for?"
"For forging her husband's name, and defrauding two hotels in Chicago."
"My husband—" Miss Lucinda staggered to her feet, then, catching sight of the crowd that had collected, she gave a fluttering cry and fainted away in the arms of the law.
When Miss Joe Hill arrived in New York, in answer to an urgent telegram, she went directly to work with her usual executive ability to unravel the mystery. After obtaining the full facts in the case, she was able to make a satisfactory explanation to the officers at headquarters. Then she sent the girls to their respective homes, and turned her full attention upon Miss Lucinda.
"The barber will be here in half an hour to cut your hair," she announced on the eve of their departure for the Catskills.
"You ought not to be so good to me!" sobbed Miss Lucinda, who was lying limply on a couch.
Miss Joe Hill took her hand firmly and said: "Lucinda, error and illness and disorder are man-made perversions. Let the past week be wiped from our memories. Once we are in the mountains we will turn the formative power of our thoughts upon things invisible, and yield ourselves to the higher harmonies."
The next morning, Miss Lucinda, shorn and penitent, was led forth from the scene of her recent profligacy. It was her final exit from a world which for a little space she had loved not wisely but too well.