CHAPTER XIV.
Ida passed with a quick step through the sitting-room and upstairs to her bedroom, where she locked the door and threw herself upon the bed in a paroxysm of tearless sobbing.
"I believe I have no more tears left," she whispered, as at last she raised herself and arranged her dishevelled hair.
She sat awhile in woful reverie upon the edge of the bed, and then crossed the room to a beautiful writing-desk which Miss Ludington had given her.

She opened it, and, taking out several sheets of paper, prepared to write.

"If I had not run upstairs that moment," she murmured, "I must have told him the whole horrible story.

But it is better this way.

I believe it would have killed me to see the look on his face.