All of the foregoing took place on the same day that Mrs. Belknap wanted to know if Jane had seen her second-best gold hat pin. The day after that, three fine embroidered handkerchiefs were said to be missing from the little inlaid box on her bureau.

Mary MacGrotty displayed her big teeth in a malevolent smile when Jane rather fearfully mentioned this last circumstance in the kitchen. "You don't suppose the wind could have blown them away last Monday, do you, Mary? It was blowing hard, I remember," Jane said, nervously twisting her apron strings.

"It 'ud be a strong wind to lift 'em out the missus's box, I'm thinkin'," said Miss MacGrotty dryly. "But they wuz lifted, all right; an' no one knows ut better 'an you, Miss Innocence, wid yer purty face an' yer big saucer eyes."

Jane stared at the grinning Irish face, her own paling. "You are a bad, cruel woman!" she cried; "and you are not honest; I saw you take sugar out of the jar, and tea out of the caddy!"

Miss MacGrotty burst into a furious fit of coughing. "Aw, you impident little spalpeen, you!" she hissed, her face purple with rage. "Git out o' me kitchen this minute! We'll attind to your case prisintly. Yis, indade; I'll not have my character blackened by a light-fingered gurl from nobody knows where. Yis; you may stare, miss. You niver come honest by the foine rings in yer box, I'm thinkin', an' the little goold watch wid a di'mon' in the back, an' the locket wid pearls."

"You have been in my room!—looking at my things!" gasped Jane. "How dare you!"

"Git out o' me kitchen, or I'll tak' the procker to yez!" shouted Mary. "How dare I! Indade! Ye'll find it ain't best to gain the ill will o' Mary MacGrotty afore you're t'rough."

Jane went slowly up the stairs revolving many things in her mind. She was even considering the advisability of confiding her whole story to Mrs. Belknap, when that young matron's cold, even tones fell upon her ear.

"I wish to speak with you, Jane, for a moment," she said, with an air of severity, which stiffened Jane's pretty upper lip into haughty indifference.

"Yes, Mrs. Belknap," said the girl with a perfect propriety of manner, which aroused a wholly irrelevant resentment in the breast of the other woman.

"I wish to tell you, Jane, that last evening after you had retired a strange man came here—to the front door—inquiring for you. Mr. Belknap, who answered the bell, referred the matter to me, and I told him to say to the man that he could not see you."

Jane stared at her mistress in silence, indignation tempered with a certain speculative curiosity looking out of her bright eyes.

"He appeared"—Mrs. Belknap went on, with rising irritation—"quite like a gentleman. But why should a man—any man—come to my front door to inquire for you? I am sorry, Jane, but this circumstance, in connection with others, looks very suspicious to me. I do not approve of a girl in your situation attracting the attention of a man—more particularly of a man in a higher station of life. It is not at all proper; you ought to know that."

"Proper?" echoed Jane inquiringly.

"Perhaps I should have said suitable," amended Mrs. Belknap. "But I insist that you shall be quite truthful with me. Who was this man?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Mrs. Belknap," said Jane. "I don't know any men." Then she blushed guiltily.

Mrs. Belknap bristled with matronly dignity as she observed the girl's conscious face. "You may go now, Jane," she said, with an air of stern virtue. "But I wish to remind you once more that it is always best to tell the truth no matter how unpleasant the consequences may appear to you. If young girls in your situation in life could only learn that!"

Jane's eyes flickered and a shadowy dimple appeared at the corner of her mouth. "Suppose one does tell the truth, ma'am, and it sounds so queer that other people will not believe it?" she asked.

"That," said Mrs. Belknap, magnificently, "is not apt to occur. A sincere person can hardly be mistaken by another sincere person. And the truth, Jane, never sounds queer!" Which aphorism may be accepted for what it is worth.

The Hon. Wipplinger Towle, for the time being, had taken up his abode upon Staten Island, in a certain pretentious hotel which overlooks the bay, and quite undaunted by his reception of the previous evening he again presented himself at the street and number furnished him by Bertha Forbes. On this occasion the door was opened by Jane herself in cap and apron.

The mutual start of amazement which followed shook both man and maid out of the chill precincts of the conventionalities.

"My God—Jane!" exclaimed Mr. Towle. "What are you doing in this house?"

This pertinent inquiry brought Jane to herself with all the speed and thoroughness of a dash of cold water. "I am working for my living," she replied haughtily.

Mr. Towle stared helplessly at the girl. "I have come," he said at last, "to fetch you home."

"If you wish to talk to me," said Jane defiantly, "you will be obliged to come around to the back door. I will ask my mistress if I may speak with you in the kitchen for a few minutes. But there isn't any use of talking," she added. "I will not go home—at least not yet." Then she shut the door in his face.

Mr. Towle said something fierce under his breath; after which, without any hesitation whatever, he looked about for the kitchen entrance. "I'll talk with her," he said, "if I have to go to Hades to do it."

In the meanwhile Jane was interviewing her mistress. "Mr. Towle has come to see me, ma'am; may I speak with him in the kitchen for a few minutes?" she asked with haughty subservience. "Mary is out; and Master Belknap is playing in his sand pile."

Mrs. Belknap was in the act of putting the finishing touches to a dainty costume. She stopped short and faced about. "Who is Mr. Towle?" she demanded.

"He is a friend of—of Uncle Robert's, from England," replied Jane, rather sullenly to her mistress's thinking.

"Dear, dear!" murmured Mrs. Belknap, eying her pleasing reflection in the glass with a frown. "This is too much! And I was just on the point of going out to a reception; now, of course, I shall be obliged to——"

Jane looked up suddenly. "I don't wish to talk with him," she said.

"Then why not send him away? Wait! I will go down myself and speak with the man. I hope you haven't left him alone below stairs. There have been so many burglaries lately. He is in the kitchen, I suppose."

Jane smothered a hysterical laugh, as Mrs. Belknap's rustling skirts swept down the rear staircase. She heard her young mistress's distinct American voice in a tone of displeased surprise. Then a door closed sharply, and the girl heard a man's retreating steps passing beneath the open window.

"He must be horribly vexed," she murmured; "but I'll not go back to England." She did not choose to question herself too sharply as to her reasons for this dogged resolution. But she reflected that Mr. Towle appeared much older since she had last seen him.

Mrs. Belknap called her presently from below stairs. "I am going now, Jane; for I really must stop at Mrs. Brown's tea if only for a few minutes. But I shall not be away long. Keep your eye on Buster every moment; I am told there are gypsies about. And, Jane, if Mary isn't back by five you must open the draughts of the range and prepare the vegetables."

Left alone with her small charge, Jane sat down on the little green bench under the vines with a kitchen towel to hem. It was very quiet and peaceful, and the occasional distant roar of a passing trolley and the loud singing of a very fat red-breasted robin, which had its nest in one of the maples which were planted at stated intervals along the street, merely served to make the country stillness the more evident. Master Belknap was pleasantly absorbed in his endeavors to construct a two-foot mountain in the midst of the sand box, and apparently much entertained by the ceaseless action of the law of gravitation evidenced by the conduct of the unstable material at its apex. He did not look up at sound of the hasty steps which approached the house; but Jane did. Then she put down the brown towel with a displeased pucker of her white forehead.

"I thought that you had gone," she said coldly.

"I beg your pardon, but I wish to speak with that—er—young woman who dismissed me a half hour ago," said Mr. Towle, with exceeding politeness of manner. "I must see her. I wish to—er—explain. She was," he added thoughtfully, "an exceedingly rude person."

"If you are referring to Mrs. Belknap," Jane said, "I beg to inform you that she is my mistress; she sent you away with as little ceremony as possible for several reasons which it is not necessary for me to explain."

"Hum—ah!" murmured Mr. Towle. "Do you—er—mind telling me one of them?"

"Oh, if you insist!" said Jane, "I told Mrs. Belknap that I did not care to talk with you, and since she very particularly wished me to be at liberty to attend to my work, which is to look after her child, and to——"

Mr. Towle made a large gesture expressive of his extreme indifference to Mrs. Belknap's child and also her brown towel. "I came from England to find you, Jane," he said earnestly. "Why did you go away?"

"Why shouldn't I go away—if I chose?" Jane wanted to know, with a provoking drawl. She set two stitches in her brown towel with exceeding care, then put her pretty head on one side to survey the effect.

"There are at least two reasons why you should have stopped at home for every one you can give for running away," he said deliberately.

"But I didn't run away!" denied Jane crossly. "I—I just went. Aunt Agatha meant to send me somewhere because she hates me, I verily believe. I preferred to go."

"Nevertheless you should have stayed," he said gently. "Your position in life demanded patience and—er—pardon me—self-control. You exercised neither, it seems, and now—" His expressive look pointed the moral.

Jane winced under the prick of it. "How did you ever find me?" she asked, after a long pause filled with industrious stitching on the brown towel.

"I saw an account of the smuggling episode in an American newspaper," he said coolly. "Then, quite naturally, I looked up Miss Forbes at the customs department, and she gave me your address. It was surprisingly simple, you see, though it might easily have been far otherwise."

Jane bent her crimson face over her work. Her needle snapped in her trembling fingers. "I—I didn't know about that dreadful woman," she said in a low, shamed voice. "I supposed she was going to travel in America. How could I have known!"

Mr. Towle bent forward, his melancholy gray eyes filled with the warm light of pity and that deeper feeling to which it is said to be akin. "Poor little girl," he said in a deep voice, which fell upon Jane's ears like a caress. "You couldn't have known, of course. And I say it's all a beastly shame—the way they have treated you and all. Won't you let me take care of you after this, Jane? You shall never suffer so again."

Jane tried to answer; but somehow the words refused to come.

"Let me take you away from all this," he pleaded. "Won't you, dear?"

At this moment Master Belknap slowly climbed up the steps. "My neck is hot," he said seriously, "an' I want a dwink of water."

Jane arose with a sigh of relief. "Yes, Buster," she said eagerly. "I'll go and fetch it for you."

The little boy turned his clear eyes upon the man and studied him in silence for a minute. "Why did you come?" he said at length.

Mr. Towle looked down at the child with resignation. "If I should ask you the same question, my young man," he observed, "you wouldn't understand, I suppose. As a matter of fact, if you had—er—stayed away ten minutes longer, perhaps——"

"My Uncle Jack has a knife named after him," proceeded the child confidentially. "It is a Jack-knife. I yuve my Uncle Jack, an'—an' I yuve my Jane."

"Hum—ah," observed Mr. Towle. Then he removed his hat—for it was a warm day—and passed his handkerchief thoughtfully over the top of his bald head. Jane caught a fleeting glimpse of its dull, pale glisten as she paused with her hand on the latch of the screen door.

Her face, as she held the glass for the child to drink, was so severely grave and sweet that the Honorable Wipplinger's heart gave a sudden painful throb. "You haven't answered my question, Jane," he murmured, bending toward her.

She looked up at him with the merciless eyes of youth. "I really cannot do as you wish, Mr. Towle," she said slowly. "And—I must ask you to go away directly; I ought not to have talked with you here without Mrs. Belknap's permission."

"I can't leave you here in this false position," he said hoarsely. "For God's sake, Jane, listen to me! If you'll not marry me, let me take you home—back to England. This is no place for you."

Jane's pretty lips set in stubborn lines. "I shall stop here," she said, "until I have earned money enough to go back to England; then I shall find a—a position—somewhere."

She was leaning forward, her gaze riveted on the far end of the street. "And—and please go at once," she added breathlessly. "You must indeed."

The small boy had scampered across the weedy little lawn and climbed upon the fence. Now he hastily scrambled down and swung open the gate. "Uncle Jack!" he shouted; "I see my Uncle Jack. I'm doin' to meet my Uncle Jack; may I, Jane?"

Jane nodded.

"You really want me to go and leave you here?" the man said heavily. "Is it because——"

"If you care for me at all," she answered cruelly, "you would not wish to annoy me by stopping after I have asked you to go."

Halfway down the street he encountered a tall, athletic young man swinging easily along, the child perched upon his shoulder, his small hands buried in the man's thick waving brown hair. "Det up, Uncle Jack," shouted the boy gleefully, and drummed his small heels upon his bearer's broad chest.

Mr. Towle caught a fleeting glance of inquiry and half-humorous apology from a pair of honest blue eyes as the two passed on the narrow wooden sidewalk.

"You are a bally fool," groaned the Hon. Wipplinger Towle in his own ear, "and a cad to boot." And having thus frankly labeled his intentions, he deliberately turned to watch the tall young American, with his insolently handsome head, as he passed up the street and in at the gate of number 24 Vanderbilt Avenue.

"She must have seen him," muttered Mr. Towle, "before the boy did." Then he allowed the infrequent trolley car to slide past him into the sparsely settled country, while he tramped, his hat pulled low over his eyes, for many a dusty mile—how many he neither knew nor cared.