More than a fortnight had passed and Jane was still engaged in "doing second work" in the modest detached villa, otherwise known as the residence of Mr. and Mrs. James Livingstone Belknap. Toward the end of her first week of service she had received a letter from her good friend, Bertha Forbes, urging her to return to England at once in the company of an acquaintance who was to be sent across on customhouse business. "I will arrange for the transportation," added Miss Forbes generously; "I want to feel that you are safe at home with your family once more."

Jane read this letter at the close of a peculiarly trying day, in which she had encountered divers rapids and cross currents in both kitchen and parlor. Mary MacGrotty was downright cross, Master Belknap peculiarly and aggravatingly mischievous, and Mrs. Belknap, grievously disappointed in her enlarged mÉnage, inclined to concentrate her irritation upon Jane's defenseless head.

"Sure, an' that gurl's more trouble than she's worth to ye," Mary MacGrotty had declared; "an' I towld yez when I come as how I c'u'dn't stan' fer no second gurl under me feet."

"If you weren't away so often, Mary," began Mrs. Belknap weakly, "I should——"

"Sure, an' I can't help that," interjected Miss MacGrotty strongly. "Blood is thicker 'an water, I'm thinkin', an' me fambly is that delicut an' ailin'. Me cousin's wife's mother was tuk bad of a Sunday," she added darkly. "I'm expectin' to hear of her death most any minute, an' the fun'ral 'll be to Brooklyn."

Mrs. Belknap sighed apprehensively. "By the way, Mary," she observed in a carefully modulated voice, which asked for information only, "have you chanced to see my carved shell comb anywhere about the house? I must have dropped it from my hair, I think, and I haven't been able to find it."

Mary MacGrotty faced about. "I have not!" she said emphatically. Then she pursed up her lips. "Hev you asked her, mum?" she demanded in a sepulchral whisper.

"You mean Jane? Oh, yes, I told her of my loss yesterday. Never mind; I dare say I shall find it soon. I hope so, anyway. It was rather a valuable comb, given me by Mr. Belknap soon after we were married, so I think a good deal of it."

Miss MacGrotty's red elbows vibrated slightly as her mistress left the kitchen; and Jane, who entered a moment later in quest of a glass of water for her young charge, found her smiling evilly into the depths of an iron pot.

"If you've got her comb hid away anywheres," muttered Mary, "you'd better watch out; she's onto yez!"

"But I haven't hidden her comb," retorted Jane, shaken out of her usual attitude of calm disdain toward the presiding genius of the kitchen. "You know I wouldn't do such a thing."

"Aw; do I, thin'!" jeered Miss MacGrotty. "Well, you moind what I say; that's all! I ain't a-goin' to be blamed fer your doin's, miss."

"I shall have to go back to England," Jane told herself, as she left the kitchen hot with rage and shame.

Master Belknap was for the moment playing peacefully in his sand pile, and Jane, who had been bidden to keep close watch upon his movements, stood looking down at him, winking fast to keep the angry tears from clouding her eyes. One, two, three great sparkling drops got the better of her and fell flashing into the sand; then Jane glanced up to find John Everett looking at her with an expression of poignant anxiety on his honest face.

"You are crying," he said in a low voice. "Why? Doesn't my sister——"

"Oh, it is nothing! I——" To her immense dismay Jane choked over an unmistakable sob which wrenched her slender throat. "I wish you would—not——"

"But I can't help it, when I see you so unhappy. Haven't you any friends in America?"

"No-o—that is—I have one," said Jane, remembering Bertha Forbes's unanswered letter.

"A man?" he asked, with sudden sharp anxiety.

Jane looked at him indignantly. "I don't know any man," she said.

"You know me," he murmured. "I should like to be your friend, Jane; may I?"

The girl made no reply. Instead she turned and walked steadily toward the house. "I will go back to England," she assured herself a second time. But when at last she had leisure to answer Miss Forbes's letter she found herself refusing her kind offer point blank. "I could not put myself under so great an obligation to you," she wrote. "Besides, I am quite safe and not too unhappy here; and I shall soon have earned the money for my passage."

Miss Forbes read this ingenuous epistle with a suspicious lifting of her sagacious brows. "I think I'll try and run over to Staten Island and see what sort of a place she's in," she said aloud.

But she forgot this friendly resolution in the rush of the next day's business, and was only recalled to the memory of it by an interview with one of the passengers on the incoming liner. The interview was not of an official nature, and its finish found Miss Forbes nervously chewing her pencil in a state of singular agitation.

To search for a person who has ostensibly started upon an indefinite tour of the United States is not unlike the traditional hunt for a needle in a haymow; nevertheless the Hon. Wipplinger Towle had gallantly embarked upon the quest, panoplied with infinite leisure, unlimited money, and the well-disciplined patience of middle age.

He had not seen fit to acquaint the house of Aubrey-Blythe with his intentions; being disposed, quite irrationally, to lay the fact of Jane's flight at its door. Mr. Towle was an exceedingly calm not to say mild-tempered man, a fact which very few persons intimidated by his stern eyes and boldly modeled chin ever found out; but upon occasions he could be severely implacable in his slowly acquired opinions. With a sagacity more than masculine he suspected that the failure of his matrimonial plans and the subsequent disappearance of Jane might be traced to Lady Agatha Aubrey-Blythe, and he actually had the temerity to tax that noble lady with both in her own drawing-room.

Lady Agatha's righteous indignation was kept in leash for some moments by her knowledge of Mr. Towle's wealth and the hope that his elderly fancy on matrimony bent might yet be guided toward the unattractive Gwendolen; but it burst its bonds when the full import of his deliberate utterances finally penetrated her intrenched understanding. She turned white with fury as she focused her light-blue stare upon the audacious Mr. Towle.

"Do you mean to intimate that you think it my fault that my husband's niece has disgraced herself and the family by running away like a governess in a cheap romance?" she demanded, in unequivocal English.

"Hum—ah," said Mr. Towle, quite unabashed. "I—er—beg your pardon, Lady Agatha, if I appear rude, but did you not say some rather nasty things to Jane the day before she left? I—er—fancy, don't you know, that it might make me run away to be told that I was absolutely unattractive, not at all clever, and—ah—dependent upon others for the bread that I ate."

"Did the shameless girl tell you that?" cried Lady Agatha, more enraged by the Honorable Wipplinger's uncompromising manner than by his words. "And after all that we have done for her, too!"

"Just—er—what have you done for her, if I may inquire?"

"What have we done for Jane Blythe? How can you ask such a question! The girl was left on our hands with scarcely a penny to her name when she was a mere infant. We have done everything—everything, and this is the way she rewards our kindness—our Christian charity! I trust I may never see the ungrateful creature again."

"If there is anything," said the Hon. Wipplinger Towle, with exceeding deliberation, "which I despise on earth, it is the—er—damnable sentiment miscalled Christian charity. It has ruined more persons than gin, in my humble opinion."

After which he took his leave with scant ceremony, Lady Agatha remaining stock still in her chair in a state of semipetrifaction.

An hour later, having recovered the power of speech, she requested her husband to formally forbid Mr. Towle the house; which Mr. Robert Aubrey-Blythe, on his part, flatly refused to do. Whereupon ensued one of an inconsiderable number of battles between the pair, during the course of which Lady Agatha, having taunted her husband with his inferior lineage, was reduced to tears by being reminded of her own dowerless condition when she condescended from her high estate to wed the rich commoner.

Perceiving his decisive victory, Mr. Robert Aubrey-Blythe waxed magnanimous to the point of begging the lady's pardon. "It's deucedly bad form to quarrel, Agatha; and what's more it's ruinous to the nerves and digestion," he had concluded sagely. "You've gone off ten years at least in your looks, my dear, from falling into such a rage over nothing at all."

"Nothing at all!" echoed Lady Agatha. "Why, Robert, the man used the most frightful language in my presence. Fancy being told that Christian charity has ruined more persons than gin! And as for the profane adjective he used in connection with that speech, I refuse to soil my tongue with it!"

Mr. Aubrey-Blythe cleared his throat with some violence. "Oh—er—as to that, I've always said that Towle was a clever fellow—a deucedly clever fellow," he observed meditatively. "He's nobody's fool, is Towle; and mind you forget all about this the next time I ask him to dine; for ask him I shall, Lady Agatha, whenever I please; and you'll be careful to be civil to him, madam."

But the Hon. Wipplinger Towle was not available as a dinner guest for several weeks thereafter; the fact being that having duly reflected upon the information conveyed to him by the grateful Susan, he had found that the shoe fitted, had instantly put it on, and had started for America on the trail of Jane.

Fate, as is her occasional custom, was scornfully kind to this elderly Sir Galahad, and he struck a warm scent before ever he had landed from the steamer in the shape of a romantic newspaper story in which figured an elderly French female smuggler, said to be an old hand at the game, and a beautiful and innocent young English girl (name not given). Scornful Fate glued the Honorable Wipplinger's eyes to this spirited account penned by an enthusiastic young reporter, who chanced to be nosing about the customhouse after material, and Mr. Towle, although as devoid of imagination as the average male Briton usually is, nevertheless pictured Jane as the unlucky heroine of the moving tale.

The reporter's richly adjectived phrase—"The slender little maiden, with her true English complexion of cream and roses, lit up by sparkling hazel eyes"—appeared to fit Jane with disconcerting completeness.

When he landed, immediately after perusing it, Mr. Towle took the pains at once to look into the matter; and this explains the unofficial interview before alluded to, in the course of which Miss Bertha Forbes reduced the top of her lead pencil to a splintery pulp, more after the fashion of an embarrassed schoolgirl than a stern-faced customs official.

"No, sir, we do not as a rule make it a practice to give out information regarding what takes place in our department," Miss Forbes informed the tall Englishman.

"Hum—ah; can you inform me whether there is any truth in this account?" Mr. Towle persisted. "The description of the—er—smugglers tallies with that of the two persons I am in search of."

Miss Forbes cast her eyes coldly over the newspaper item. "There have been several similar cases of late," she admitted. "But this states, you notice, that both parties were immediately dismissed upon confiscation of the goods. It is not a part of my work to keep track of detected smugglers, and so of course——"

"You—er—saw the young girl described in the story; did you not?"

"I—I couldn't be sure of it," prevaricated Miss Forbes, actually blushing.

The Hon. Wipplinger Towle fixed his glass more firmly in his eye and proceeded to stare the intrepid Bertha out of countenance "I beg your pardon," he observed masterfully, "but I—er—fancy you're mistaken."

"In what?" snapped the female inspector.

"In saying you're not sure you saw Miss Blythe. You—er—recall the whole incident perfectly, I am confident."

"Of all the—impudence!" murmured Miss Forbes, somewhat excitedly. "Well, suppose I do; what then?"

"If you know where she is, it will be greatly to her advantage if you will tell me," said Mr. Towle mildly.

"I don't know about that," mused Bertha Forbes. "Who, for example, are you? You're not her uncle."

"Thank you," said Mr. Towle astutely. "No; I am not a relative of Miss Blythe's. I am—er—merely a friend. But I beg to assure you that I have her best interests warmly at heart."

"Humph!—Well, I guess you have," admitted Miss Forbes, after a prolonged semi-official scrutiny of Mr. Towle's countenance, an ordeal which that honorable gentleman bore with the calm of conscious integrity. "But for all that I don't think I shall tell you where she is."

"Why not?" urged Mr. Towle, with an agitation which caused him to appear almost youthful.

"Because I'm sure she wouldn't thank me for it," said Bertha Forbes coolly. "Good day, sir."

"By heavens, madam, I'll not be put off like this!" declared Mr. Towle, very much in earnest. "I came to America on purpose to find her."

"Find her then," advised Miss Forbes, with tantalizing brevity. "I can't talk to you any longer to-day."

"To-morrow then?" Mr. Towle caught eagerly at the straw of suggestion in her last word.

But Miss Forbes was denied to unofficial visitors on the following day, and for three days thereafter, a period which Mr. Towle endured with such resignation as he could muster.

On the fourth day he intercepted that stony-hearted official on her way home to her lodgings. "Look here, Miss Forbes," he said doggedly, "I didn't offer you money the other day to tell me of Miss Blythe's whereabouts. But——"

"Don't do it to-day either," snapped the lady, with an ominous flash of her really fine eyes. "You're not in England, remember."

"Yet I find the cabbies and hotel people more rapacious than in London," Mr. Towle observed thoughtfully. "Nevertheless I beg your pardon, Miss—er—Forbes, and I entreat you to tell me where Jane is. I—I believe I shall be ill if I can't find her."

"You are looking pretty well done up," acquiesced Miss Forbes; "but,"—seriously,—"how am I to be sure you are not the last person on earth she wants to see?"

"I wish to heavens I could be sure I'm not!" exclaimed Mr. Towle fervently. "But somebody ought to take her home."

"Granted," agreed Miss Forbes. "I've offered to send her back to England; but she won't go—for me. She might for you; but I doubt it."

"I have at least earned the right to try," he said, with something so convincing in his tone and manner that Bertha Forbes, who was at heart neither more nor less than a woman, surrendered at discretion.

"Very well; I'll give you her address, and you can go and see her, if you like," she said gruffly. "But I warn you she's an obstinate young person, quite bent upon having her own silly way."