The excitement of being once more in a big city rendered Alora Jones wakeful on that eventful Tuesday morning following her arrival in Chicago. At daybreak she rose and peered trough the window into a gray and unimpressive side street; then, disinclined to return to bed, she slowly began .  
Presently a sharp knock sounded upon her door. Somewhat surprised, she opened it far enough to see a " target="_blank">middle-aged woman in nurse's uniform in the dim hallway.
 
"Miss Jones? Miss Alora Jones?" questioned the woman in a soft voice.
 
"Yes; what is it?"
 
"I've a message for you. May I come in?"
 
Alora, fearful that Mary Louise or the Colonel might have been taken suddenly ill, threw wide the door and allowed the woman to enter. As the nurse closed the door behind her Alora switched on the electric light and then, facing her visitor, for the first time recognized her and gave a little cry of surprise.
 
"Janet!"
 
"Yes; I am Janet Orme, your mother's nurse."
 
"But I thought you abandoned nursing after you made my father give you all that money," an accent of scorn in her tone.
 
"I did, for a time," was the quiet answer. "'All that money' was not a great sum; it was not as much as your father owed me, so I soon took up my old profession again."
 
The woman's voice and attitude were and deprecating, yet Alora's face expressed distrust. She remembered Janet's at her father's studio and how she had dressed, and attended theatre parties and fashionable restaurants, recklessly the money she had exacted from Jason Jones. Janet, with an upward sweep of her half veiled eyes, read the girl's face clearly, but she continued in the same tones:
 
"However, it is not of myself I came here to speak, but on behalf of your mother's old friend, Doctor Anstruther."
 
"Oh; did he send you here?"
 
"Yes. I am his nurse, just now. He has always used me on his important cases, and now I am attending the most important case of all—his own."
 
"Is Dr. Anstruther ill, then?" asked Alora.
 
"He is dying. His health broke weeks ago, as you may have heard, and gradually he has grown worse. This morning he is sinking rapidly; we have no hope that he will last through the day."
 
"Oh, I'm sorry for that!" exclaimed Alora, who remembered the old doctor with real affection. He had been not only her mother's physician but her valued friend.
 
"He learned, quite by accident, of your arrival here last evening," Janet went on, "and so he begged me to see you and you to come to his bedside. I advised him not to disturb you until morning, but the poor man is very restless and so I came here at this unusual hour. It seems he is anxious to tell you some secret which your dead mother to his keeping and, realizing his hours are numbered, he urges you to lose no time in going to him. That is the message to me."
 
There was no emotion in her ; the story was told calmly, as by one fulfilling a mission but indifferent as to its success. Alora did not hesitate.
 
"How far is it?" she quickly asked.
 
"A fifteen minute ride."
 
The girl glanced at her watch. It was not quite six o'clock. Mary Louise and the Colonel would not appear for breakfast for a good two hours yet and after breakfast they were all to go to the yacht. The hour was , affording her time to visit poor Doctor Anstruther and return before her friends were up. Had Alora paused to give Janet's story more consideration she might have seen the inconsistencies in the nurse's statements, but her only thoughts were to learn her mother's secret and to show her sincere consideration for her kindly old friend.
 
Hastily completing her she added her hat and jacket and then said:
 
"I am ready, Janet."
 
"I hope we shall find him still alive," remarked the nurse, a cleverly assumed anxiety in her tone, as she took the key from inside the door and fitted it to the outer side of the lock.
 
Alora passed out, scarcely aware that Janet had pretended to lock the door. down the hall the woman handed her the key.
 
"Come this way, please," she said; "it is nearer to the carriage which is ............