"Yes; but that wasn't what made me gasp. The paper says: 'A young lady was at the teller's window when the robber came up with Mr. Galbraith—' Aunt Fanny, I was the 'young lady'!"
"You? horrors!" ejaculated the invalid, holding up wasted hands of deprecation. "To think of it! Why, child, if anything had happened, a terrible murder might have been committed right there before your very face and eyes! Dear, dear; whatever are we coming to!"
Charlotte the well-balanced, smiled at the purely personal limitations of her aunt's point of view.
"It is very dreadful, of course; but it is no worse just because I happened to be there. Yet it seems ridiculously incredible. I can hardly believe it, even now."
"Incredible? How?"
"Why, there wasn't anything about it to suggest a robbery. Now that I know, I remember that the old gentleman did seem anxious or worried, or at least, not quite comfortable some way; but the young man was smiling pleasantly, and he looked like anything rather than a desperate criminal. I can close my eyes and see him, just as I saw him yesterday. He had a good face, Aunt Fanny; it was the face of a man whom one would trust almost instinctively."
Miss Gilman's New England conservatism, unweakened by her long residence in the West, took the alarm at once.
"Did you notice him particularly, Charlotte? Would you recognize him if you should see him again?" she asked anxiously.
"Yes; I am quite sure I should."
"But no one in the bank knew you. They couldn't trace you by your father's draft and letter of identification, could they?"