"You are a very clever young girl, but I do not understand your game," he said, bluntly. "Why have you run away from your friends and your bright prospects, Miss Carew, to masquerade under a false name and wear out your life teaching the rough Perkins cubs?"
She trembled and grew deathly pale as she faltered:
"There is—there must be—some mistake. My name is really Daisy Lynn, and I—I have not—I have no friends and no bright prospects, except to earn my own living by unremitting toil."
Tears came into the dark eyes as she spoke. The great Southern detective looked at her with puzzled eyes. "What superb acting!" he thought, admiringly. "But, what the deuce is the matter with the girl, to make her hide herself in this way from her friends?"
"Perhaps you do not know who I am?" he said; and he held before her eyes a card on which was neatly engraved his name and profession.
"I—I have heard of you, Mr. Wren!" gasped Daisy Lynn.
She sunk into a chair, and put her small white hand before her eyes, as if to shut out some dreadful sight, her bosom heaving with frightened sobs.
He remained perfectly silent, and all at once Daisy Lynn slid out of her chair and knelt in child-like humility at his feet.
"Oh, sir, have pity on me!" she prayed. "Go away, and leave me in peace! I am not insane, whatever any one may say. That was but a temporary spell, and, under the care of the kind friend to whom Heaven directed me that awful night, I soon recovered my reason. A wrecked love had made me mad, but that is all over now. Only—only you would not be able to convince them of it. So I—I do not want to go back. Oh, God! I shall go mad, indeed, if I am sent again to that dreadful place! Mr. Wren, perhaps you have a sister of your own. Think of her, and, for sweet pity's sake, do not betray me to my enemies, who, under the guise of friends, would work me the bitterest woe!"
A light broke in upon his mind.