But he received no encouragement, and allowed his suggestion to remain unfinished.
She looked grateful for this, and was pulling down her veil when she perceived two or three men on the other side of the room, watching her in evident wonder.

Stepping back to the desk, she addressed the clerk again, this time with a marked distinctness: "I have been very ill, I know, and not always quite myself.

But the shock of this accident to my nurse has cleared my brain and made me capable again of attending to my own affairs.

You can trust me; I can do my errands all right; but perhaps I had better have one of the boys go with me." The clerk, greatly relieved, rang his bell, and the gentlemen at the other end of the room sauntered elsewhere to exchange their impressions of an incident which was remarkable enough in itself, without the accentuation put upon it by the extreme beauty of the girl and the one conspicuous blemish to that beauty--her unfortunate scar.

With what additional wonder would they have regarded the occurrence, had they known that the object of their interest was not an unknown Miss Campbell, but the much pitied, much talked-of Carmel Cumberland, sister of the man then on trial for his life in a New York town.
With her first step into the street, Carmel's freshly freed mind began its work.