He stepped softly to her side and lightly touched one of the admired shoulders.
She turned quickly and suppressed an exclamation ere it was half-uttered.
“Why, Harry—Doctor Haslam, I mean! How did you know it was I?”
“Why, Amy—that is to say, Miss Winnett! What on earth are you doing here? Pardon the question, but I thought you were on the mountains. I'm all the more glad to see you.”
While he pressed her hand she looked searchingly into his eyes, a fact of which he was conscious despite her veil.
“I'm not here—as far as my people may know. I'm at the Catskills with my cousins—except to my cousins themselves. To them I've come back home for a week's conference with my dressmaker. Our house isn't entirely closed up, you know. Aunt Rachel likes the hot weather of Philadelphia all summer through, and she's still here. When I arrived here this morning, I told her the dressmaker story. She retires at eight and she thinks I'm in bed too. But I'm here, and nobody suspects it but you and Mary, the servant at home, who knows where I've come, and who's to stay up for me till I return to-night. That's all of it, and now, as you're a friend of mine, you mustn't tell any one, will you?”
“But I know nothing to tell,” said the bewildered doctor. “What does all this subterfuge, this mystery mean?”
Amy Winnett considered silently for a moment, while Doctor Haslam mentally admired the slim, well-rounded figure, the graceful poise of the little head with its mass of brown hair beneath a sailor hat of the style that “came in” with this summer.
“I may as well tell you all,” she answered, presently. “I may need your assistance, too. I can rely upon you?”
“Through fire and water.”