TRYON

Her eyes shone brightly and her cheeks grew rosy red as she lifted out

from its tissue-paper wrappings a long, rich coat of Alaska seal, with

exquisite brocade lining. She put it on and stood a moment looking at

herself in the glass. She felt like one who had for a long time lost her

identity, and has suddenly had it restored. Such garments had been

ordinary comforts of her former life. She had not been warm enough in the

coarse black coat.

The other box contained a beautiful hat of fur to match the coat. It was

simply trimmed with one long, beautiful black plume, and in shape and

general appearance was like the hat he had borrowed for her use in the

fall. She smiled happily as she set it upon her head, and then laughed

outright as she remembered her shabby silk gloves. Never mind. She could

take them off when she reached the church.

She packed the little black dress into the suit-case, folded the felt hat

on the top with a tender pat, and, putting on her gloves, hurried down to

the one who waited for her.

The matron had gone upstairs to the linen closet and left the girl with

the discontented upper lip in charge in the office. The latter watched the

elegant lady in the rich furs come down the hall from the elevator, and

wondered who she was and why she had been upstairs. Probably to visit

some poor protégée, she thought. The girl caught the love-light in the

eyes of Tryon Dunham as he rose to meet his bride, and she recognized him

as the same man who had been in close converse with the cheaply dressed

girl in the parlor an hour before, and sneered as she wondered what the

fine lady in furs would think if she knew about the other girl. Then they

went out to the carriage, past the baggy, rubbered man, who shrank back

suddenly behind a stone column and watched them.

As Dunham shut the door, he looked back just in time to see a slight man,

with dark eyes and hair, hurry up and touch the baggy man on the shoulder.

The latter pointed toward their carriage.

"See!" said Dunham. "I believe those are the men who were hovering around

the house last night."

The girl leaned forward to look, and then drew back with an exclamation of

horror as the carriage started.

"Oh, that man is my cousin Richard," she cried.

"Are you sure?" he asked, and a look of determination settled into his

face.

"Perfectly," she answered, looking out again. "Do you suppose he has seen

me?"

"I suppose he has, but we'll soon turn the tables." He leaned out and

spoke a word to the driver, who drew up around the next corner in front of

a telephone pay-station.

"Come with me for just a minute, dear. I'll telephone to a detective

bureau where they know me and have that man watched. He is unsafe to have

at large." He helped her out and drew her arm firmly within his own.

"Don't be afraid any more. I will take care of you."

He telephoned a careful description of the two men and their whereabouts,

and before he had hung up the receiver a man had started post-haste for

the Y.W.C.A. Building.

Then Tryon Dunham put the girl tenderly into the carriage, and to divert

her attention he opened the box of flowers and put a great sheaf of white

roses and lilies-of-the-valley into the little gloved hands. Then, taking

her in his arms for the first time, he kissed her. He noticed the shabby

gloves, and, putting his hand in his breast pocket, drew out the white

gloves she had worn before, saying, "See! I have carried them there ever

since you sent them back! My sister never asked for them. I kept them for

your sake."

The color had come back into her cheeks when they reached the church, and

he thought her a beautiful bride as he led her into the dim aisle. Some

one up in the choir loft was playing the wedding march, and the minister's

wife and young daughter sat waiting to witness the ceremony.

The minister met them at the door with a welcoming smile and hand-shake,

and led them forward. As the music hushed for the words of the ceremony,

he leaned forward to the young man and whispered:

"I neglected to ask you her name, Tryon."

"Oh, yes." The young man paused in his dilemma and looked for an instant

at the sweet face of the girl beside him. But he could not let his friend

see that he did not know the name of his wife-to-be, and with quick

thought he answered, "Mary!"

The ceremony proceeded, and the minister's voice sounded out solemnly in

the empty church: "Do you, Tryon, take this woman whom you hold by the

hand to be your lawful wedded wife?"

The young man's fingers held the timid hand of the woman firmly as he

answered, "I do."

"Do you, Mary, take this man?" came the next question, and the girl looked

up with clear eyes and said, "I do."

Then the minister's wife, who knew and prized Tryon Dunham's friendship,

said to herself: "It's all right. She loves him."

When the solemn words were spoken that bound them together through life,

and they had thanked their kind friends and were once more out in the

carriage, Tryon said:

"Do you know you haven't told me your real name yet?"

She laughed happily as the carriage started on its way, and answered,

"Why, it is Mary!"

As the carriage rounded the first corner beyond the church, two breathless

individuals hurried up from the other direction. One was short and baggy,

and the sole of one rubber flopped dismally as he struggled to keep up

with the alert strides of the other man, who was slim and angry. They had

been detained by an altercation with the matron of the Y.W.C.A. Building,

and puzzled by the story of the plainly dressed girl who had taken the

room, and the fine lady who had left the building in company with a

gentleman, until it was settled by the elevator boy, who declared the two

women to be one and the same.

A moment later a man in citizen's clothing, who had keen eyes, and who was

riding a motor-cycle, rounded the corner and puffed placidly along near

the two. He appeared to be looking at the numbers on the other side of the

street, but he heard every word that they said as they caught sight of the

disappearing carriage and hurried after it. He had been standing in the

entrance of the Y.W.C.A. Building, an apparently careless observer, while

the elevator boy gave his evidence.

The motor-cycle shot ahead a few rods, passed the carriage, and discovered

by a keen glance who were the occupants. Then it rounded the block and

came almost up to the two pursuers again.

When the carriage stopped at the side entrance of a hotel the man on the

motor-cycle was ahead of the pursuers and discovered it first, long enough

to see the two get out and go up the marble steps. The carriage was

driving away when the thin man came in sight, with the baggy man

struggling along half a block behind, his padded feet coming down in

heavy, dragging thuds, like a St. Bernard dog in bedroom slippers.

One glimpse the pursuers had of their prey as the elevator shot upward.

They managed to evade the hotel authorities and get up the wide staircase

without observation. By keeping on the alert, they discovered that the

elevator had stopped at the second floor, so the people they were tracking

must have apartments there. Lurking in the shadowy parts of the hall, they

watched, and soon were rewarded by seeing Dunham come out of a room and

hurry to the elevator. He had remembered his promise to his mother about

the engravers. As soon as he was gone, they presented themselves boldly at

the door.

Filled with the joy that had come to her and feeling entirely safe now in

the protection of her husband, Mary Dunham opened the door. She supposed,

of course, it was the bell-boy with a pitcher of ice-water, for which she

had just rung.

"Ah, here you are at last, my pretty cousin!" It was the voice of Richard

that menaced her, with all the stored-up wrath of his long-baffled search.

At that moment the man from the motor-cycle stepped softly up the top

stair and slid unseen into the shadows of the hall.

For an instant it seemed to Mary Dunham that she was going to faint, and

in one swift flash of thought she saw herself overpowered and carried into

hiding before her husband should return. But with a supreme effort she

controlled herself, and faced her tormentor with unflinching gaze. Though

her strength had deserted her at first, every faculty was now keen and

collected. As if nothing unusual were happening, she put out her cold,

trembling fingers, and laid them firmly over the electric button on the

wall. Then with new strength coming from the certainty that some one would

soon come to her aid, she opened her lips to speak.

"What are you doing here, Richard?"

"I've come after you, my lady. A nice chase you've led me, but you shall

pay for it now."

The cruelty in his face eclipsed any lines of beauty which might have been

there. The girl's heart froze within her as she looked once more into

those eyes, which had always seemed to her like sword-points.

"I shall never go anywhere with you," she answered steadily.

He seized her delicate wrist roughly, twisting it with the old wrench with

which he had tormented her in their childhood days. None of them saw the

stranger who was quietly walking down the hall toward them.

"Will you go peaceably, or shall I have to gag and bind you?" said

Richard. "Choose quickly. I'm in no mood to trifle with you any longer."

Although he hurt her wrist cruelly, she threw herself back from him and

with her other hand pressed still harder against the electric button. The

bell was ringing furiously down in the office, but the walls were thick

and the halls lofty. It could not be heard above.

"Catch that other hand, Mike," commanded Richard, "and stuff this in her

mouth, while I tie her hands behind her back."

It was then that Mary screamed. The man in the shadow stepped up behind

and said in a low voice:

"What does all this mean?"

The two men, startled, dropped the girl's hands for the instant. Then

Richard, white with anger at this interference, answered insolently: "It

means that this girl's an escaped lunatic, and we're sent to take her

back. She's dangerous, so you'd better keep out of the way."

Then Mary Dunham's voice, clear and penetrating, rang through the halls:

"Tryon, Tryon! Come quick! Help! Help!"

As if in answer to her call, the elevator shot up to the second floor, and

Tryon Dunham stepped out in time to see the two men snatch Mary's hands

again and attempt to bind them behind her back.

In an instant he had seized Richard by the collar and landed him on the

hall carpet, while a well directed blow sent the flabby Irishman sprawling

at the feet of the detective, who promptly sat on him and pinioned his

arms behind him.

"How dare you lay a finger upon this lady?" said Tryon Dunham, as he

stepped to the side of his wife and put a strong arm about her, where she

stood white and frightened in the doorway.

No one had noticed that the bell-boy had come to the head of the stairs

and received a quiet order from the detective.

In sudden fear, the discomfited Richard arose and attempted to bluff the

stranger who had so unwarrantly interfered just as his fingers were about

to close over the golden treasure of his cousin's fortune.

"Indeed, sir, you wholly misunderstand the situation," he said to Dunham,

with an air of injured innocence, "though perhaps you can scarcely be

blamed. This girl is an escaped lunatic. We have been searching for her

for days, and have just traced her. It is our business to take her back at

once. Her friends are in great distress about her. Moreover, she is

dangerous and a menace to every guest in this house. She has several times

attempted murder----"

"Stop!" roared Dunham, in a thunderous voice of righteous anger. "She is

my wife. And you are her cousin. I know all about your plot to shut her up

in an insane asylum and steal her fortune. I have found you sooner than I

expected, and I intend to see that the law takes its full course with

you."

Two policemen now arrived on the scene, with a number of eager bell-boys

and porters in their wake, ready to take part in the excitement.

Richard had turned deadly white at the words, "She is my wife!" It was the

death-knell of his hopes of securing the fortune for which he had not

hesitated to sacrifice every particle of moral principle. When he turned

and saw impending retribution in the shape of the two stalwart

representatives of the law, a look of cunning came into his face, and with

one swift motion he turned to flee up the staircase close at hand.

"Not much you don't," said an enterprising bell-boy, flinging himself in

the way and tripping up the scoundrel in his flight.

The policemen were upon him and had him handcuffed in an instant. The

Irishman now began to protest that he was but an innocent tool, hired to

help discover the whereabouts of an escaped lunatic, as he supposed. He

was walked off to the patrol wagon without further ceremony.

It was all over in a few minutes. The elevator carried off the detective,

the policemen, and their two prisoners. The door closed behind Dunham and

his bride, and the curious guests who had peered out, alarmed by the

uproar, saw nothing but a few bell-boys standing in the hall, describing

to one another the scene as they had witnessed it.

"He stood here and I stood right there," said one, "and the policeman, he

come----"

The guests could not find out just what had happened, but supposed there

had been an attempted robbery, and retired behind locked doors to see that

their jewels were safely hidden.

Dunham drew the trembling girl into his arms and tried to soothe her. The

tears rained down the white cheeks as her head lay upon his breast, and he

kissed them away.

"Oh!" she sobbed, shuddering. "If you had not come! It was terrible,

_terrible_! I believe he would have killed me rather than have let me go

again."

Gradually his tender ministrations calmed her, but she turned troubled

eyes to his face.

"You do not know yet that I am all I say. You have nothing to prove it. Of

course, by and by, when I can get to my guardians, and with your help

perhaps make them understand, you will know, but I don't see how you can

trust me till then."

For answer he brought his hand up in front of her face and turned the

flashing diamond--her diamond--so that its glory caught the single ray of

setting sun that filtered into the hotel window.

"See, darling," he said. "It is your ring. I have worn it ever since as an

outward sign that I trusted you."

"You are taking me on trust, though, in spite of all you say, and it is

beautiful."

He laid his lips against hers. "Yes," he said; "it is beautiful, and it is

best."

It was very still in the room for a moment while she nestled close to him

and his eyes drank in the sweetness of her face.

"See," said he, taking a tiny velvet case from his pocket and touching the

spring that opened it. "I have amused myself finding a mate to your stone.

I thought perhaps you would let me wear your ring always, while you wear

mine."

He lifted the jewel from its white velvet bed and showed her the

inscription inside: "Mary, from Tryon." Then he slipped it on her finger

to guard the wedding ring he had given her at the church. His arm that

encircled her clasped her left wrist, and the two diamonds flashed side by

side. The last gleam of the setting sun, ere it vanished behind the tall

buildings on the west, glanced in and blazed the gems into tangled beams

of glory, darting out in many colored prisms to light the vision of the

future of the man and the woman. He bent and kissed her again, and their

eyes met like other jewels, in which gleamed the glory of their love and

trust.