CHAPTER I.

THE total,” began Jacob Willoughby, adjusting his pince-nez and regarding with near-sighted attention the scrap of paper he had selected from a little white heap on the table in front of him—“the total is just four thousand five hundred and seventy-six dollars and ninety-seven cents.”

The figures froze the features of the Willoughby connection into immobility for a second, but only for a second.

“I agreed to buy her wraps,” spoke up crisply Miss Willoughby, a maiden lady of vinegary aspect, who sat on the extreme edge of the horsehair and mahogany chair and glowered at the white heap on the table. “Read the bill, Jacob.”

Obediently Jacob searched through the heap and extracted another scrap. “Total, one thousand five hundred and forty-three dollars and eighty-three cents,” he announced, ponderously.

If she hadn’t been a Willoughby, one would have said that the lady of vinegary aspect snorted. All the Willoughbys, however, prided themselves on never doing anything low. “That for wraps,” muttered this one, acidulously. “And she wheedled a set of sables out of Jacob at Christmas time.”

Mr. Willoughby coughed deprecatingly and avoided the eye of his wife, a woman with an appallingly firm chin who sat opposite him. She now spoke sharply. “It’s Jacob’s ridiculous lack of backbone that’s to blame for all this foolish extravagance,” she declared. “Why did he consent in the first place to Jane’s furnishing that expensive flat? Why did he get us to agree to divide the expense of her clothes among us, and make us the victim of her spendthrift habits? For what she calls lingerie”—Mrs. Jacob Willoughby pronounced the French word with ineffable scorn, as though it suggested a multitude of moral lapses—“she has run up a bill of—— What’s the amount, Jacob?”

Her husband, who was beginning to look crushed, searched with pathetic haste through the white drift of papers, selected another slip and readjusted his pince-nez. Suddenly a wave of red swept over his distressed features.

“Well?” queried his wife, sharply.

“She’s—she’s itemized it!” murmured the unresourceful Jacob, faintly.

Thomas Willoughby, bachelor, who was a trifle hard of hearing, but whose other faculties were very sharp, leaned forward and put his hand behind his ear. “What say?” he demanded, querulously. “Speak up louder, man, can’t you?” Thomas, who was sixty, regretted his affliction chiefly because it so frequently prevented his hearing the recital of some fresh deviltry of Jane’s.

Mrs. Jacob now interposed. “The total’s on the other side,” she said, eying her husband suspiciously, and, with a guilty air, he hastily reversed the paper. “The amount is eight hundred and seventeen dollars and sixteen cents,” he informed his auditors, lifelessly.

“And just for one season,” supplemented Mrs. Willoughby. “It’s more than I spend—it’s more, I’m sure, than any of us spend”—she surveyed the Willoughby connection virtuously—“in five years.”

“Oh, well,” gurgled the youngest and most attractive of the Willoughbys that were present, a placid, fair-haired woman, to whom any account of Jane and her doings always read like a page out of a thrilling novel, “she’s only twenty-four, you know, and it costs more to live in New York than in the country.” The lady sighed. Her country home was luxurious, but in her soul she longed for the flesh pots represented by a New York season. Her husband, however, devoted to his Alderney cows, his Berkshire hogs and his fancy fowls, put his foot down firmly whenever the subject of a town house, or even a brief month at one of the quieter hotels, was mentioned.

“Of course it costs more to live in New York,” snapped Miss Willoughby, “and I’ve contended all along that Jane has no business keeping up that flat in town. In the first place, ’tisn’t proper. A young woman with her flighty ideas and without a chaperon or any female relation to give her countenance! Mark my words”—with acrid emphasis—“Jane will yet trail the Willoughby name in the dust.”

“Why doesn’t she marry again?” queried the Willoughby bachelor, impatiently. “Deuce take it, De Mille’s been dead a year and six months. Is the girl determined to wear widow’s weeds forever. Gad!” he chuckled, shrilly, “I’d marry her myself to-morrow if I wasn’t sixty and her uncle. Not,” he added, hastily, for he, like most of the Willoughbys, was notoriously close-fisted, “that I countenance her extravagance. But she needs a husband’s discipline.”

The depressed Jacob Willoughby here saw an opportunity to put in a word in vindication of himself.

“You all know perfectly well,” he began, with dignity, “that when De Mille up and died, just when his affairs were in the most critical condition, and when a little firmness on his part would have kept him alive long enough to save something out of the wreck for his widow, Jane declared that she wouldn’t be bored with another husband, and that if the connection couldn’t support her in the style to which she was accustomed, she would go on the stage. When I said she might spend her time with us, visiting each of us in turn, you know she flatly refused, and insisted upon an apartment. She said that, though He was a Willoughby Himself”—Jacob repeated this Janeism with peculiar relish—“God never intended relations to be lived with, that they were generally people you’d have nothing to do with if the accident of birth hadn’t made them cousins, uncles and aunts.” As a matter of fact, when Jane had uttered this impertinence, she had excepted Jacob, but the senior Willoughby was too wise to hint at the exception in the presence of his wife, who was also a Willoughby.

“You should have been firm,” she observed, witheringly. “That threat about her going on the stage was all nonsense.”

“It was not nonsense,” retorted her husband, with unexpected spirit, “and I had to think of the bishop.”

Jacob’s retort told as he meant that it should, and a painful pause ensued. It was the bachelor Willoughby who broke it. “Well,” he exclaimed, pettishly, drawing out his watch, “Jane will be here in five minutes, and dinner in half an hour. The question is, what are we going to do?”

“We are going to tell her,” snapped Miss Willoughby, “that the apartment must be given up, and that she must live with each of us in turn. Since she’s here—or will soon be here—she can remain a while with you, Susan, and then she can come to me. In the meantime, Jacob can see about subletting her apartment. Hark! There’s wheels! Now”—turning to her brother—“be firm, Jacob. Let us”—encouragingly, and glancing in turn at each of the Willoughbys, who, strange to relate, looked ill at ease, if not frightened—“let us all be firm.”

The door opened and everybody started. But it was only the butler.

“A telegram for you, sir,” he said to Mr. Jacob Willoughby, extending a yellow slip. The latter took it and hastily opened it. “It’s from Jane,” he announced, glancing up. Did the other Willoughbys imagine it or did his voice express relief?

“Read it,” commanded his wife, crisply.

You dear, good people, I’m the biggest wretch on earth. Did so want to get to you before the house party broke up, but there’s the Reffolds’ dinner for to-night which I had entirely forgotten. Hope to get down for a week end later. Love to all.

Jane.

For fully half a minute not a sound was heard in the stuffily furnished Willoughby library. Then Miss Willoughby, in a voice ominously calm, asked: “Will you kindly tell us the number of words in that telegram, Jacob?”

“Total, fifty,” murmured Jacob, reluctantly, dropping the yellow slip on the white heap and surveying it ruefully.

“Fifty!” echoed the Willoughby connection, feebly.

Susan Willoughby, Jacob’s wife, was the first to regain her mental equilibrium. “You will write this evening, Jacob?” she questioned, with stony composure.

“I will write this evening,” responded her husband, firmly.

The bachelor Willoughby suddenly chuckled. The outraged connection stared at him in astonishment. “I—I was just thinking,” he giggled, “that economy doesn’t seem to be Jane’s strong point.”

At its best, the Willoughby connection’s sense of humor was the reverse of keen, and the situation was not one, in their opinion, that invited levity. But whatever crushing blow threatened the frivolous member—and Mrs. Susan Willoughby and Miss Willoughby both looked primed—was happily averted by the opportune reappearance of the butler.

“Dinner is served,” he announced, solemnly, and Jacob Willoughby sprang with alacrity to offer his arm to the most attractive of the female Willoughbys.

“I will summon the bishop to wrestle with Jane,” announced Susan, magisterially, as she led the way to the dining room. And the connection realized that Jane had, indeed, become a problem.

CHAPTER II.

Jane balanced her spoon on the brim of the shell-like cup and smiled at Mr. Scott.

“Yesterday, Billie, I received another of those Willoughby epistles—about my extravagance, you know.”

“The idea of anybody thinking you extravagant,” murmured Mr. Scott, with an adoring glance.

“Oh, as to that,” observed Jane, airily, “I admit I’m extravagant, but I’m purposely so. Listen, my child, and I’ll tell you the story of my life. But first let me put a drop more rum in your tea.” Mr. Scott held out his cup.

“It does taste of tea,” he admitted. “And you know I’ve always cracked up the flavor of your—er—tea, Jane.” She dropped the rum out of a silver filigree bottle with an amethyst in the stopper.

“You see,” she continued, thoughtfully, “before my eyes were opened or my teeth cut, those Willoughby relations of mine married me to De Mille because he had money. He was—oh, well, Billie, he was the biggest bore I ever met. However, I saw as little of him as possible, but you can imagine that I did my best to make life miserable for those Willoughbys who blighted my youth. What are you laughing at, Billie? Well, De Mille got into financial difficulties, and selfishly took to his bed. I got the best nurse in town, and went to see him every day. Yes, I did. It was good for me, of course!”—Jane’s conversation usually took the form of a monologue. “Finally, he had the good taste to die. When one of the Willoughbys, who came up to town to help me bear my grief, came in and told me that he had passed to a better land, I said: ‘Well, God knows best.’” Mr. Scott tittered. “Aunt Susan—that was the Willoughby—assured the family that I was showing a beautiful spirit. As a matter of fact, I really could have danced up and down, I was so relieved. You see, Billie, if the man had ever pretended to love me, I should not have been such a wretch. But he just wanted a good-looking woman to preside over his house, and he wanted to marry into the Willoughby family, and the Willoughby family wanted to get me married to money and off their hands, so it was just a disgraceful bargain, about which your humble servant had no more to say than the dress goods on a bargain counter. When it was discovered that De Mille had left me nothing but debts, I refused to worry, and informed my beloved relations that my support was their business. Otherwise, the stage for Jane, and the Willoughbys’ view of the stage is very similar to the devil’s view of holy water.”

“Well, they’ve got plenty of this world’s goods,” commented Mr. Scott, who was quite content to have Jane do most of the talking, an arrangement that suited her to perfection.

“They’re rolling in wealth!” she exclaimed, filling her own cup. “But they’re as close as bark on a tree, and how to bring them to time after De Mille’s death kept me awake nights. I made up my mind to get even with them for marrying me off like a slave, and the first thing I did was to order the most expensive mourning New York affords. I still cling to it, for black is so becoming to me.”

“I should think it was,” said Mr. Scott, fervently. “You are simply ravishing in that cap.”

“The cap was my own idea,” observed Jane, sweetly. “The real lace ones are so stunning and so—er—expensive. But where was I? Oh, yes. The Willoughbys held a mass meeting, or convocation, or something, to talk me over. Finally it was decided that they would pay my bills among them—if I was not too extravagant—and that I should spend my time with each of them in turn, handed around from house to house like a poor relation. But it was at that point in their proceedings that Jane rose and gave them an ultimatum.”

“I put my money on Jane,” spoke up Mr. Scott, promptly.

“You won’t lose,” answered that young woman. “I rose, wiped my eyes with a handkerchief—black border, two inches; price, three dollars—and spoke my mind. I said that I had married to suit them, and that henceforth I would live to suit myself; that I was perfectly willing they should pay my bills, but that I intended to take an apartment in town and go on living as before. I said it was not my fault that my poor, dear husband—I shed a tear or two—had met with financial reverses and was not able to leave me anything. I said, further, that I would not be dictated to about the size of my bills, that everyone knew I was not extravagant—yes, Billie, I said that with a straight face—and that I was in deep grief, and could not bear any more discussion of my affairs, and so I would just take my leave and send in the bills.”

“Bet they were paralyzed,” observed Billie.

“That’s not the word for it. I left them gasping for breath. But they hate gossip, and that’s where I had them. They hate to be called mean, though being mean doesn’t worry them. That’s the way with some people, you know. So I rented this apartment, moved my things in, drew a few checks on uncle Jacob—the best of the lot, by the way—and here I have lived in my deep grief.” Jane smiled at Mr. Scott and leaned back in her chair.

“That’s the first chapter,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered, “and yesterday’s letter, which I’m coming to, is the beginning of the second. This letter informed me that my bills were becoming outrageously large, that I needed a chaperon—fancy a widow in her first grief needing a chaperon, Billie—and the long and short of it is that I must give up this apartment and go and live among them as originally proposed.

“Well?” queried Mr. Scott.

“Well, what?” demanded Jane. “You certainly didn’t for a moment think I would do it?”

“No,” he responded. “There’s a very simple way out, you know. Marry me and let the Willoughbys go to——”

“Thunder,” finished Jane. “Oh, Billie, I do appreciate the fact that you love me and want me. And if I loved you, I’d live in a cottage with you—though I hate cottages—and work like a slave. But the awful fact must be faced that I do not love you. I am horribly fond of you, though, Billie, and I wish I could marry you, but I never could make you understand how I hate being married. I was knocked down to the highest bidder, and the experience was too disagreeable to permit me to marry again or to fall in love with anyone.”

“But you’re flirting awfully with Kingston and Maitland—and there’s Dick Thomas—oh, Jane, it’s pretty tough on me!” The boy—for Mr. Scott wasn’t much more—looked as though he were going to cry.

“Fiddlesticks!” exclaimed Jane, contemptuously. “Nothing in the world would induce me to marry one of those men—or any other. Freedom is the breath of life to me, Billie, but I must have my little recreations. You can’t understand—no man can—how flirting to a woman is a justifiable evening up of the sufferings that some women have to endure. Why, I’m leading Jack Maitland an awful existence because he flirted desperately with Betty Lockwood, who loves him to distraction. I’m doing it for Betty’s sake, and it’s good for him. Betty married Maurice just out of pique.” Jane put down her cup. “I’m really trying to do good, in my own way, Billie.”

“You should join the Humane Society,” observed Mr. Scott, sarcastically.

“The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children will rescue you from my clutches if you persist in coming here all the time,” she retorted, severely. “I’ll tell you what I am going to do”—changing the subject, swiftly. “I’ll answer the Willoughby epistle in person. I’ll go down to Rosemount to-morrow and tell them things that I hope will do them good. I do not intend to reduce my bills, or live with them. Whenever I get a letter from them like this last one, I go out and buy something.”

“What did you buy yesterday?” queried Mr. Scott, with lively interest.

“A pair of high-boys—genuine colonials! I’ve no place for them here, of course, but the Willoughbys needed them for a lesson.”

“Let me drive you down to Rosemount in my car,” said Mr. Scott, with sudden inspiration.

“Um—I’d like the car and the chauffeur, but you, Billie, cannot come. It might cause gossip.”

“Let ’em talk, who cares?” exclaimed Mr. Scott, defiantly.

“I do,” said Jane, decidedly. “No, you can’t come, Billie, but if you’ll have the car here to-morrow, at ten, I’ll drive down in it, stay all night, and come back the next day.”

“I’m afraid they’ll persuade you to live with them,” murmured Mr. Scott, miserably.

“To think that you would say that to me,” said Jane, reproachfully. “I intend to live alone from this time on. I hate living with anybody.”

“Wait until you’re in love!” warned Billie.

“Yes, I’ll wait,” responded his hostess, briskly. “A woman who has had my luck would be an ungrateful wretch if she permitted herself to become entangled again. Why, it isn’t one woman in ten who marries for money whose husband dies in two years. No wonder I’ve clung to deep mourning. It’s an expression of thankfulness—of the warmest gratitude on my part. No one can say of me, Billie, that I do not realize my blessings!”

Mr. Scott rose and tried to kiss Jane’s hand, but she put it determinedly behind her.

“Respect my mourning, my child,” she said, rebukingly.

After Mr. Scott had taken his departure, she ordered two suit cases packed, gave orders to her two servants about the care of the apartment during her absence, and telegraphed a lengthy message to the Willoughbys.

CHAPTER III.

It was a glorious May day. Jane, whose sound digestion and general superlatively good health enabled her always to front life genially, even when she was most convinced that it was nothing but a heartless farce, was in rollicking spirits. She let Johnson, Billie’s chauffeur, take full charge of the car, while she lay back luxuriously, humming snatches of gay song or planning fresh audacities that would humble the proud spirit of the Willoughbys. But silence for any length of time when there was somebody to talk to was always irksome to Jane.

“You have heard of Elijah, of course?” she observed, presently, to the smug-faced driver.

“Mrs. Carruth’s man, mum?” he asked, stolidly.

“Goodness, no, Johnson!” exclaimed Jane, in a horrified voice. “Though, really”—judiciously—“if Polly insists on his keeping up that awful pace with her car, I think he, too, will go to heaven in a chariot of fire. But”—this to the chauffeur—“I was not referring to Mrs. Carruth’s man, Elihu, but to Elijah, a Bible character. Don’t you”—severely—“read your Bible, Johnson?”

“Well, mum,” began Johnson, cautiously, “seeing as how I didn’t take much to books when I was a kid, and seeing as how big words always kind of floor me now, I don’t go in much for readin’, ’cept about the sports in the papers.”

“They should publish the Bible in words of one syllable,” reflected Jane. “I must speak to the bishop about it. Elijah, Johnson, was a prophet who went to heaven in a chariot of fire. I’ve always liked to think that it was a kind of superior motor car, and that it took Elijah several days to reach his destination, and that he had a perfectly delicious time whizzing up through the air, past the stars and the moon, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, Johnson, if he leaned out and jabbed at the moon as he passed, just to see what it was really made of. Personally, I take no stock in what the scientists tell us, and I’ve often thought that if Elijah had come back and told about his ride, they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Now, it’s my private opinion, Johnson, that the world is flat, as flat as a—goodness gracious, what’s that!”

“It’s somethin’ gone wrong, mum,” said Johnson, resignedly. “There was a bolt I was suspectin’ of this morning, but Mr. Scott said that on no account was you to be kept waitin’, and that, bolt or no bolt, I was to be at your door at ten sharp. An’ you’ll remember, mum”—reproachfully—“that I waited in front of those steps one hour by th’ watch Mr. Scott gave me Christmas, and if it wasn’t for the fact that every minute I was expectin’ to see you come runnin’ down them, I could have put in a new bolt——”

“Of course it’s all my fault, Johnson,” interrupted Jane, “but I never was on time in my life, and I’m too old to begin now. Here’s a nice secluded bit of road where you can overhaul the car, and I’ll just walk about a bit for exercise. But don’t let it take long, Johnson, for I’m simply famished, and we have to go ten miles yet before we get any luncheon.”

By this time the driver was under the car, and only a pair of tremendous boots was visible. After giving them an amused look, Jane divested herself of her motor rig, shook out her skirts, and, with a parting warning to Johnson to blow the horn when he was ready, sauntered slowly down the country road, which reminded her of one of the picturesque lanes in English Surrey.

“It’s a queer thing,” she communed with herself, as she walked along, “that the first day I’m in the country I adore it, and resolve firmly never, never to leave it again; and the second day I begin to pick flaws in it, and take notice of all the hideous little creeping things, and the third I loathe it, and feel that I will die instantly if I can’t get back to where there are lots of people and a great deal of noise and plenty of dirt. I suppose I——”

Jane’s saunter and reflections both came to an abrupt end, for a turn in the lane had disclosed to her a man sitting on a log by the roadside, munching hungrily at an appetizing-looking sandwich, the most appetizing one, the hungry Mrs. De Mille instantly decided, that she had ever seen. Beside the man was a small hamper of straw, and leaning against the log was a bottle. He was reading out of a small book, and utterly oblivious, apparently, to his surroundings. He finished in a few bites the sandwich, and, without lifting his eyes, thrust his hand in the hamper, drew forth another, and proceeded deliberately to devour that, too. More and more envious grew Jane’s eyes as she watched the rapid shrinking of the thing she most coveted just then. The second sandwich disappeared like its predecessor, and once more the long, brown hand sought the hamper. Another sandwich was drawn forth, it was raised to the man’s mouth, but before he had a chance to take a bite Jane cried out, impulsively: “Oh, please don’t eat them all!”

The man looked up, bewildered, and then, catching sight of Jane, sprang to his feet and pulled off his cap. “I—beg your pardon,” he began, uncertainly; “did you speak?”

“Yes,” calmly answered Mrs. De Mille, who was always prepared to back her own imprudent impulses. “I asked you to please not eat that other sandwich. I’m terribly hungry!”

A smile lighted up the man’s serious face. “Oh, there are more in the hamper,” he answered. “My appetite is big enough, but it is not as big as Mrs. Moore thinks it is. Please help yourself.” He held out the hamper.

“Thanks,” said Jane, taking a sandwich and beginning to devour it hungrily. “If Mrs. Moore made these,” she observed, presently, “I think she has very good taste—in sandwiches.”

“It’s her specialty,” he responded. “Everybody, you know, has a specialty. But won’t you be seated?” With a gesture he indicated the log, and Jane, frankly delighted with her adventure, seated herself.

“Have they?” she queried, helping herself to another sandwich. “Now, I wonder what mine is?”

The man regarded her with interest. “If you have just fallen from the sky——” he began.

“No, it was a motor car,” interrupted Jane. “That is, I didn’t fall from it, but something happened to a bolt. The chauffeur is working at it down the road a bit. I didn’t stay to examine it, for I always get a smudge on my nose when I look at the works of a motor car. Perhaps that’s my specialty—getting smudges on my nose.” She looked at the man and smiled. “It isn’t a very useful one, is it?”

“There are practical specialties and ornamental specialties,” he observed, “and it’s——”

“Oh, well, you know getting a smudge on one’s nose is neither ornamental nor practical,” broke in Jane, with a laugh. Then, changing the subject quickly: “It’s awfully good of you to feed the hungry.”

“Pray let me give drink to the thirsty, too,” he said. Picking up a small silver cup, he walked over to a brook that purled behind them, rinsed it out and, coming back, filled it from the bottle of wine that rested against the log.

Jane drank it gratefully. “I never in my life had a more delicious meal,” she said, quite truthfully. Then she looked at him inquisitively. “Do you live some place around here, or did your car break down, too?” she asked. “I’m not so lucky as to own a car. I’m stopping for a time at Rosemount—the village, you know.”

“Oh, then, perhaps you know the Willoughbys,” said Jane. “The Willoughbys, of Willoughby Hall.”

“Do they live in an ugly mass of architecture on a hill, and does the lady look like a grenadier and the man like a drummer boy in his first engagement?”

Jane threw back her head and laughed. “That’s Aunt Susan and Uncle Jacob to a T,” she exclaimed. The man flushed with embarrassment.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Of course I had no idea they were relatives of yours.”

“You haven’t offended me,” Jane hastened to assure him. “I know they’re impossible, though Uncle Jacob really means well. I’m on my way down there now.”

“For a visit?” queried the man, who was staring at her in an impersonal sort of way that rather piqued her.

“Not if I know myself, and I flatter myself I do,” she responded, decidedly. “No, I’m going down to give them—Aunt Susan particularly—a piece of my mind.”

“Lucky Aunt Susan!” commented the man, still regarding her with that air of detached interest.

“You say that because you’ve never had a piece of my mind,” observed Jane, darkly. “Because I’m desperately poor——”

“Poor!” exclaimed the man, disbelievingly, as his eye took in the details of her exceedingly smart get-up.

“As poor as a church mouse,” said Jane, impressively. “I’m supported by contributions made by the Willoughby connection, and because my bills for the past season have been a—a trifle large, they wrote me an abusive letter. Fancy!”

“Fancy!” echoed the man, absent-mindedly. “Why don’t you——”

But an explosive blast on a horn interrupted him. Jane rose hastily. “That’s Johnson,” she said. “I must go. But how are you going to get back to Rosemount?” she demanded.

“Oh, I’ll pick up one of the market gardeners along the road,” he answered, indifferently. “Besides, I came out on a quest, and I can’t return until it is successfully consummated.”

“A quest!” echoed Jane, and promptly sat down again. “It sounds interesting,” she said; “tell me about it.”

“I’m looking for a heroine,” he explained.

“A heroine!” repeated Mrs. De Mille, blankly, wondering for the first time if he was as sane as he looked.

“Yes, for a book, you know,” he said, in a matter-of-fact way. “I scribble for a living, and lately my publishers have complained that I never draw a real flesh-and-blood woman. I’ve determined to put one in the new book I’m writing.”

“So you’re strolling around the country in search of one,” mused Jane. “I should think you’d stand a better chance of finding one in town.” There was another blast on the horn, short and angry this time, but Mrs. De Mille waved it airily aside.

“I can’t work in town,” he answered. “I’ve just come back from Alaska, and it seems so shut-in there.” He nodded in the direction of the skyscrapers of New York.

“What would a heroine have to do?” queried Jane. “I mean a model heroine?”

“Oh, just give me a chance to study her, and let me pay her for it,” he answered, coolly. “I work in a small bungalow, and if she’d give me some sittings——” But once more the voice of the horn broke in—a long, reproachful, plaintive note this time. Mrs. De Mille rose, reluctantly. “I really must go, or Johnson will ruin his voice,” she said. Then she had a sudden inspiration. “You’re going to Rosemount,” she said to the man. “Why can’t we take you there? I’d like to do something to pay for that delicious meal.”

“You’ve paid me a thousandfold by accepting it,” he answered, quickly. “I couldn’t think of putting you to any trouble.”

“It isn’t any trouble,” she answered, positively. “There’s plenty of room in the car.” The man’s face showed signs of yielding.

“Come,” she commanded, imperiously; and he stooped and gathered up the hamper and his book and followed her down the road.

“Johnson,” Mrs. De Mille called to the chauffeur, who was sitting in the car like patience on a monument, but without the smile, “this gentleman has saved me from starvation, and he’s now going to save you; for in this hamper, Johnson, are three of the most delicious sandwiches you ever ate. Hustle them down as quickly as you can, and then we’ll repay his generosity by giving him a lift to Rosemount.”

When the car was well under way, Jane turned impressively to her new acquaintance. “And now I want to ask you,” she said, “if you think I’d do for the heroine?”

“It’s been my wish ever since I first set eyes on you,” he answered, calmly. “I’m in great luck.”

“And the Willoughbys,” said Jane, cheerfully, “will be in a rage, so it’s a delightful arrangement all around.”

CHAPTER IV.

Mrs. Willoughby and Miss Willoughby—the latter had driven over from her country home to discuss Jane—sat in the library listening to the shrieks of laughter that floated across the hall from the music room, laughter interspersed with the sharp yelping of a dog and bars of music.

“They’ve kept that up,” said Mrs. Willoughby, crisply, “since luncheon.”

“What did you say his name was?” asked Miss Willoughby, whose patent disgust made her look more vinegary than ever.

“She calls him Dick,” said aunt Susan, disdainfully. “His last name is Thomas. A flighty idiot, who talks with a lisp.”

“Where’s the bishop?” demanded the guest, suddenly.

“He’s packing,” answered her sister-in-law, with an air of repressed anger. “Jane took him out in a motor car, some man’s motor car that she came down in, and he came back looking much upset, and said he had to pack and return to town immediately. And he had promised to stay two days!”

“Must have been her doings,” commented Miss Willoughby.

“I don’t know,” said Aunt Susan, drearily. “He did say something about fleeing temptation.”

“The hussy!” Miss Willoughby’s voice expressed virtuous scorn. “Wait until she comes to me.” She closed her lips, grimly.

“I was going to tell you about that,” said her hostess. “Jane has what she calls a job.”

“A—a job!” echoed Miss Willoughby, faintly.

Susan Willoughby nodded her head, vigorously. “That’s what she calls it,” she said, indignation revealed in every monosyllable. “She’s hired out as a model!”

Miss Willoughby shrieked and fumbled feebly for her smelling salts.

“Oh, I don’t mean the—er—Trilby kind, you know,” said Mrs. Willoughby, hastily. “Some wretched creature whom she picked up with on her way down here is writing a book, and he’s offered to pay her if she’ll let him study her in order to get material for his heroine.”

“I never heard of such a thing!” gasped Miss Willoughby. “It isn’t respectable, and you don’t need to try to convince me that it is. What does Jacob say?”

“Jacob!” There was indescribable contempt expressed in Mrs. Willoughby’s voice as she uttered the name. “Jane simply twists him around her little finger.”

Miss Willoughby rose suddenly, with the air of one having made up her mind to perform an unpleasant task.

“Where are you going?” demanded her hostess.

“To tell Jane what I think of her conduct and to warn——”

But before the spinster had a chance to finish her sentence, the door across the hall was flung open suddenly, and Jane, laughter in her eyes and on her lips, her hair disheveled, emerged. Under her arm was tucked a yelping skye terrier, and close behind her followed an immaculately attired and rather good-looking young man, who appeared to be thoroughly enjoying himself. As usual, Jane was talking.

“You’re not musical, Bijou, and it’s a waste of time trying to make you musical! Here Mr. Thomas and I have spent the greater part of an hour trying to impress upon you the difference between Wagner and ragtime, but it’s been a miserable failure. I want to think you have a soul, Bijou, though the bishop doesn’t believe you have, but after the painful lack of discrimination you have just shown—Aunt Mary! When in the world did you come, and what a delightful surprise!”

Jane, who had suddenly espied her two aunts, unceremoniously dropped the skye terrier and darted into the library, leaving the young man hovering uncertainly in the doorway. She seized the spinster’s two mitt-clad hands and kissed her heartily on each withered cheek. Then she stood back a pace or two and surveyed her with rapt admiration.

“I’m terribly jealous of you, Aunt Mary,” she exclaimed. “Look at your complexion! Peaches and cream!”—as a matter of fact, it more closely resembled sole leather, but Miss Willoughby brightened up, nevertheless. “And your figure! What in the world have you been doing to your figure? Such curves!”

The spinster, conscious of the strange young man in the doorway, blushed painfully.

“My dear——” she began, in a stage whisper, motioning stealthily in the direction of Mr. Thomas.

“Oh, pardon me,” said Jane, willfully misunderstanding her aunt’s meaning. “Aunt Mary, this is Mr. Thomas. I shall have to ask you to entertain him for a while, for I have a business engagement.” She pulled out a tiny, jeweled watch and gave an exclamation. “Half an hour late! Dick, what is it they do to working people when they are half an hour late? Though why, indeed, I should ask you I don’t know, for I’m sure you never did half an hour’s real work in your life! Oh, yes, dock them—that’s it, isn’t it? I thought of yacht, for I knew the term was nautical, and then I instantly thought of ‘docked’”—triumphantly; Jane was always intensely interested in her mental processes. “Did you know I had become a working person, Aunt Mary? Earning my living by the sweat of my brow, and that sort of thing?” Miss Willoughby smiled, weakly. “Well, ta, ta,” continued Jane. “Remember”—shaking a warning finger at the spinster—“Mr. Thomas is young and unsophisticated, and I’ll not have his young affections trifled with.”

“Oh, I thay——” began Mr. Thomas, protestingly, and making a motion as though he were bent on accompanying Mrs. De Mille.

“No, Dickie,” she said, firmly, “bosses don’t like to have young men a-followin’ of their gells.” This was said with an inimitable cockney accent that caused Mr. Thomas to grin appreciatively. Jane made a wicked moue at him, nodded to her aunts and hurried away, leaving the two ladies speechless, and the guest she had thrust upon them looking decidedly uncomfortable.

As she sauntered down the road that led past the bungalow which had been erected in the rear of the Moore cottage, and which her new acquaintance had pointed out as his workshop, Jane looked as though she hadn’t a care in the world. As a matter of fact, however, she was not without her misgivings in regard to the outcome of the engagement she had entered into. She had done it chiefly to torment the Willoughbys, but she was honest enough to admit to herself, as she walked leisurely on, that the man himself had aroused her curiosity, and that this had something to do with her obeying that reckless impulse to offer herself as a model.

“He’s doubtless a counterfeiter or a gentleman burglar who’s planning to steal the Willoughby spoons,” she communed with herself, cheerfully, “and it’s very likely that he’ll insist on my becoming his accomplice, and then Aunt Mary will have a chance to say: ‘Didn’t I tell you Jane would come to a bad end.’ I really believe they’d——”

But the quaint-looking bungalow had suddenly loomed up in Mrs. De Mille’s path, and put an end to her reflections. Half hesitatingly she knocked on the door, and it was instantly thrown open by the man whom she chose to call her employer.

“Please don’t tell me I’m late,” she said, as she gave him her hand and stepped across the threshold. “Being late, you know, is a weakness one is born with, I think, like not being able to spell, or having a thirst for strong drink. In town they call me ‘the late Mrs. De Mille.’ The only occasion I was ever known to be on time was at poor De Mille’s funeral. Billie Scott said—— But how delightfully cozy it is here!”

Jane paused and surveyed the room with interest. It was simply furnished with some good rugs, several well-filled bookcases, two or three comfortable-looking chairs, and a long table that apparently served for a desk, for it was covered with papers; but there was a cheerful fire in the great fireplace—a comfort that Mrs. De Mille appreciated, for the day, though bright, was chilly—and in front of this was a tea table, on which a copper kettle was singing merrily over a blue, alcohol flame.

“I’m glad you like it,” said the man, gravely. “Can I take your hat and jacket?”

“Oh, I’ll just toss them over this chair,” said Jane, carelessly, suiting the action to her words. “I hope you’re not one of those people who must have everything just so. De Mille was like that. He found me a terrible trial. His idea of a well-ordered existence was a place for everything and everything in its place. I don’t mind having a place for everything, you know, but I think having everything in its place robs life of a great deal of uncertainty, and it’s the uncertainty that makes it fascinating, don’t you think?”

“When I was a little chap,” said the man, pulling forward a chair for Jane and taking one himself near the table, “I had to look out not only for myself, but also for my mother, who sewed when she could, to support herself and me, but who was crippled with rheumatism most of the time. Our next meal was always a matter of uncertainty. My idea of heaven then was a place where the future was absolutely certain. No”—reflectively, as he leaned over to poke the fire—“I don’t believe I want any more uncertainties in mine.”

Mrs. De Mille stared at him with lively curiosity in her eyes, and noted approvingly the strong, clean contour of his jaw, and his long, lean, brown hands. “He may have been born poor, but he was also born a gentleman,” she reflected, shrewdly. Aloud she said:

“Do you know that I haven’t the remotest idea what your name is?”

“How very remiss of me!” he exclaimed, looking up from the fire. “It’s John Ormsby.”

“Oh,” said Jane, “you’re the man who writes men’s books. Why,” she continued, severely, “have you ignored my sex?”

He smiled. “I have already told you,” he said, “that I don’t know enough about you to put you in a book.”

“You’ve chosen a bad specimen to study,” she retorted. “I give you fair warning.”

“As to that,” he answered, with an indifference that nettled Jane, “I’m not at all particular about the type. My publishers demand a real flesh-and-blood creation, but they didn’t specify the type.”

“He’s downright brutal,” said Jane, to herself, but rather enjoying the novelty of seeing an opportunity for a pretty speech to her ignored. “You’ll have to instruct me in my duties,” she said, smilingly. “Now, if there was only such a thing as a Handy Manual for authors’ models that I could get and read up in, my course would be plain sailing. As it is, I’m all at sea.”

“Oh, all you have to do is to talk,” said the man, encouragingly. “I’m going to make you a cup of tea.” He began to handle the tea things deftly. “Talk and tea,” commented Jane, thoughtfully. “It sounds easy. I believe I’ve got what Billie Scott would call a ‘snap.’”

CHAPTER V.

My dear Deneen: The Labrador trip sounds good to me, and as soon as the book is off my hands, which will be about the time you fellows are ready to start, I reckon I’ll be wid ye. The old spring fever has again seized hold of me, and I’m fairly sweating for a whiff of the open. I wrote you a squib shortly after I arrived, and the ragged kid to whom I gave it to post swears by all that’s unholy—he knows nothing holy—that he posted it, but I suppose it represented too promising spitball material to be wasted on a village post office. This is the worst place to get anything done. Every villager regards himself as an American from “wayback,” and scorns to turn an honest penny by running or walking an errand. But it’s a jolly place to write in. I’m boarding with a queer old couple by the name of Moore, who take summer boarders during July and August, and who, for the convenience of the town folk, have built a bungalow a short distance from the house. It’s quite decently furnished with books and rugs and a fireplace, and my credentials were so good that the Moores have turned it over to me for a workroom. The book I’m at work on is a deliberate attempt to pander to the depraved taste of hoi polloi. Yet, I confess it without shame, I’m tremendously interested in it. I find myself reading over and over again parts I’ve written—not with a view to improving them, but because I think they’re so good. Sounds maudlin, doesn’t it? But it’s the gospel truth. And the book is all about a woman! Smoke that in your pipe, old man! I, who have heretofore scorned all feminine frumperies, find myself dissecting frills and analyzing chiffons. Whence cometh this superior knowledge? do I hear you ask with a suspicious leer? Whisper! I have a model, and I’m learning about women from her. Kipling’s idea, you see, but put into respectable and strictly business-like practice. For an hour or so every afternoon she gives me “sittings” in the bungalow. She’s no ordinary paid hireling, mind you, but a fine New York lady, who seems to have accepted the job partly because she desired a new experience, and partly to displease some rich but close-fisted relatives upon whom she’s dependent, but whom she appears to be leading a life. I was tramping about the country one day shortly after I came down here, and while I was having a bite by the roadside, a tailor-made vision with hungry eyes and a wistful air suddenly appeared out of the nowhere and demanded a sandwich. She accepted my invitation to sit down and share what I had, and then she insisted on giving me a lift, and on the way to Rosemount artlessly discussed her deceased husband and her relatives—in short, told me several chapters out of the story of her life. I suppose she’s about the most frivolous specimen of the frivolous sex. Her male admirers are numerous, and some of them trail down from town every day. The morning after she arrived—she came down in a motor car, and it is to a lost bolt that I owe my introduction—I met her out in the car gazing soulfully into the eyes of an elderly party with a clerical collar and an Episcopal air. She told me afterward it was Bishop ——, and informed me quite calmly that he had fled to town to save his immortal soul, his wife being in Europe. Said her relatives were scandalized, a fact that seemed to please her very much. Last night I walked down to the village to get some medicine for my landlord, who had eaten something that disagreed with him and was in a rather bad way. It was as dark as pitch, and I had a lantern. I flashed it as I came around a turn in the road, and found myself face to face with my model and two young men. Each had hold of one of her hands, and each looked idiotically blissful. She seemed the least confused of the bunch, and said “good-evening” quite calmly. I don’t suppose there’s another bundle of such contradictions in the universe. She has all the aplomb of a woman of the world, and all of the naÏvetÉ of an unspoiled child. No sort of companion for a man, you understand, but vastly amusing. She speaks of her deceased husband with the most brutal frankness, and makes no pretense of regarding his passing as anything but a happy release for her. For all her apparent spontaneity, I’ve an idea that at heart this model of mine is as hard as rocks. But as I’ve already told you, she’s teaching me a lot, and the book is progressing, and if it’s a success, half the royalties go to her. That is only fair.

Keep me posted about arrangements for your trip. I’m writing now at white heat, and should have the book ready for my publishers within a fortnight. And then, old pal, for Labrador and the open and real, real life.

Yours,
John Ormsby.

CHAPTER VI.

Dear Betty: I’m inclosing that cold-cream recipe you asked for. It’s warranted to give you a perfect complexion, keep your hair in curls, your hat on straight and your temper amiable. I’m glad to hear that you and Maurice have had an understanding, and that everything is all serene. If you have to be in love with somebody, I honestly think it’s much better to be in love with your husband. De Mille, of course, was out of the question, but fortunately I’ve never felt the necessity of being in love with anyone, and, now that I’ve reached the age of twenty-four, it’s not probable that I ever will. Confidentially, Betty, I never could see what you saw in Maitland. His eyes are good, I grant you, but he’s so terribly sentimental. I’ve flirted with him, so I know him. Next to living with a man, there’s nothing like a good flirtation to put you on to all his good and bad qualities. Your husband is worth a hundred of him. I know.

My dear, I’m earning my own living, and, according to the Willoughbys, it’s the most extravagant thing I’ve done in the whole course of my extravagant career. You see, every time I remember I’m a working woman, I feel independent, and order a lot of new things, and the bills have been rather stiff, I’ll admit. But you know how miserly the Willoughbys are! Aunt Susan suggested that I figure up how much I’m going to get and try to live on it, but I declined most emphatically. I never was good at doing sums, and I don’t propose to begin to subtract and add at this late day. Besides, I haven’t the remotest idea how much I’m going to receive, for I refuse to let Mr. Ormsby mention the matter. Money matters are so tiresome. But I’m forgetting that you know nothing about my job. I’m a model—a literary man’s model. You’re in with that literary set, so I suppose you’ve read his books. I read one—Billie Scott raved so about it that I simply had to—but there wasn’t a woman in it, just a lot of horrid men, that smoked and swore when they weren’t fighting, and that fought when they weren’t swearing and smoking. It seems that Mr. Ormsby’s publishers have insisted upon his turning over a new leaf and writing something about women, and, knowing nothing about our sex, Betty, he conceived the strictly original idea of employing a model. I came down to Rosemount in Billie’s motor car, and picked him—Mr. Ormsby—up and took him along with me. We had quite a romantic meeting. I found him eating his luncheon by the roadside, and insisted on his sharing it with me. I give him “sittings” every afternoon in an adorable bungalow that he’s fitted up as a workshop. He explained to me, in the beginning, that he might have picked out some woman of his acquaintance and studied her, but that he considered it wouldn’t be honorable—that with a hired model he felt absolutely independent. I really can’t endure him, but I’ve resolved to stick this out to the bitter end. I feel like a little wiggly bug pinned to a piece of cardboard, with a pair of sharp, cold, gray eyes analyzing every wiggle. This Ormsby is shockingly lacking in savoir faire, and so far as flirting is concerned, he doesn’t know the a, b, c’s of the game.

I began this letter yesterday afternoon, before dinner, with the hope of getting it out in the evening mail, but Billie and Ernie Francis came down from town and stopped to dinner. I’m sure the Willoughbys have never been so gay in their lives—we’ve had company every day since I’ve been down here—but I can’t see that it has improved Aunt Susan’s disposition much. Something occurred last night that I suppose has shoved me a peg further down in Mr. Ormsby’s estimation. Not that I care! After dinner, Billie and Ernie and I went for a walk down to the village. It was very dark coming back, and, walking between them, naturally I didn’t resent it when each took one of my hands. There’s something so comforting about the grasp of a strong man’s hand. Haven’t you often thought so, Betty? If I ever marry again, I intend to pick out a man who will be able to hold my hand in a nice way when I’m dying.

Unfortunately, as we came around a bend in the road, a lantern was flashed at us. It was Ormsby, and you can’t imagine the look of disgust on his face when he took in the situation. As though it were any business of his! I had a wretched evening, for Billie and Ernie were furious because I permitted each to hold my hand. They have such queer ideas of propriety! How little real pleasure one gets out of life, Betty! Louise has sent me down one of those bÉbÉ hats—a perfect dream. I intend to wear it to church to-morrow morning and give the villagers a treat.

By the way, dear, if you’ve any old clothes to dispose of, send them down here. I’ve discovered a poor family—father out of work, mother sick, baby three days old. They are absolutely destitute. I’ve ordered a beautiful christening robe for the baby, and have had the bill sent to Uncle Jacob. I intend to be its godmother. But why will those people insist on having so many children, Betty? Six in this family! Fancy! I’ve a good mind to write to the President, and insist on his providing for them. This man, even when he works, doesn’t make enough to support two—to say nothing of six. The baby is quite pretty, except that its nose is inclined to spread. I’ve explained to the mother how, by pinching it every day, she can get it into quite a respectable shape. You see, the baby’s a girl, and much will depend upon its nose. If mine were Roman instead of retroussÉ, I would probably have been a bluestocking and respected by Mr. Ormsby. Not that I care, though!

Lovingly,
Jane.

P. S.—I wish you’d leave an order at a bookstand to have all his books sent down. Have them sent c.o.d. to Uncle Jacob.

CHAPTER VII.

There were three things in the culinary line that the sum of Jane’s accomplishments included—nut salad, rarebit and tea. After her first visit to the bungalow she had taken upon herself the task of brewing the cup that cheers, an arrangement that suited Ormsby perfectly, for she looked very pretty fussing with the tea things, and he was not above taking what he called an “academic interest” in her attractiveness.

“If one can only do a few things, naturally, all one’s vanity is centered in them,” she was observing to him now, by way of explaining her fondness for tea making. “I fancy I regard my talent as a mother regards her only child. If she has a number of children, she’s uncertain, of course, whether Ann’s blue eyes are the most beautiful in the world or Jimmie’s brown ones, and she can’t decide whether to thrust Susie upon the attention of visitors, that they may admire her golden curls, or whether to give raven-locked Lucy the center of the stage. With one child or one accomplishment it’s different; you simply have to concentrate your admiration on that. You won’t take two lumps?” Ormsby shook his head firmly, and Jane handed him his tea. “It’s just tea with one lump; it’s nectar with two,” she observed, regretfully. “Speaking of children,” she continued, as she poured herself out a cup, “have you seen the new Larson baby?”

“I’m sorry to say I have not,” said Ormsby, gravely.

“It’s a dear,” observed Jane, enthusiastically. “I think it will be the beauty of the Larson family.”

“If the Larson family occupy that cottage near the grove, and if all the children who play about there are Larson children, I fancy the baby wouldn’t require much in the way of looks to be the beauty of the Larson family,” he commented, dryly.

“What a nasty remark!” exclaimed Jane, indignantly. “They all have their good points when you come to study them. And you can’t imagine how amusing they are. I’ve been helping them along a bit lately, and between their extravagant gratitude and the Willoughbys’ indignation at the size of the bills, I’ve been having no end of a good time.” Jane leaned back and smiled. Ormsby frowned. A good time! That apparently was the aim and end of her existence. Aloud he said:

“Are you never serious, Mrs. De Mille?”

“Not very often; what’s the use?” responded Jane, promptly.

“I should imagine that a woman who has had the”—he hesitated for an instant—“the sad experience you have had would show the effect of it.” Ormsby was really ashamed of this remark, but Jane’s flippancy frequently goaded him on to say things he regretted. But she did not look offended.

“Sad experience?” she repeated, puzzled. “Oh, you mean the Willoughbys?”

Her employer smiled in spite of himself. He quickly regained his air of grave composure, however. “No, I don’t mean the Willoughbys; I mean the death of your husband,” he said, rebukingly.

“Oh, that!” exclaimed Jane, smiling sweetly. “Why, you see, that’s really the reason why I’m so gay now. When De Mille was alive, I was always so solemn. He had no sense of humor—it really takes two to see a joke, you know—and consequently I was depressed most of the time. Since his passing away”—Jane thought this sounded well—“I laugh most of the time—the reaction, I suppose.”

Ormsby handed his cup for some more tea. “No sugar this time,” he said, coldly. Jane looked at him wistfully.

“I suppose I’m a disappointment to you—as a heroine, I mean,” she remarked, almost humbly. “Perhaps”—regarding him tentatively—“if you had known I was not serious you would not have engaged me.”

Ormsby shrugged his shoulders. “You answer my purpose very well,” he answered, indifferently, blissfully unaware that Jane’s fingers were itching just then to box his ears. “But you know,” he went on, determinedly, “woman should take some things seriously.”

“I do,” responded Jane. “I take you seriously.”

Ormsby ignored her and continued: “Life is not a huge joke, you know. It——”

“You remind me of my first husband,” interrupted Jane, frowning. “He talked like that.”

“First?” he queried. Jane blushed. Then she said, defiantly: “Is it so improbable that I shall marry again?”

“Oh, that reminds me,” he said, with that air of impersonal interest which, in the beginning, had secretly infuriated Mrs. De Mille, and which now unaccountably depressed her. “Will you allow me to ask you a question?”

“Certainly,” she answered; “ask me anything you like.”

“I want to know,” he said, with great deliberation, “whether you have ever been in love?”

Jane stared at him with wide-open eyes. “Don’t think,” he continued, hastily, “that I have any desire to pry into your personal affairs, but for the sake of my book——” “Oh, the book, by all means,” she answered, rather hardly. “No, I’ve never been in love. However”—flippantly—“I trust I will fall in love some day. It will be a new experience, at least. You see, ever since I was a very little girl I have been jobbed out——”

“Jobbed out!” exclaimed the puzzled Ormsby.

“Passed around from one Willoughby to the other,” explained Jane, impatiently. “My father was the improvident one of the Willoughby connection, and he married an equally improvident but awfully pretty girl, my mother. They died within a short time of each other”—Jane caught her breath, but continued without a trace of feeling in her voice—“when I was just two years old. The Willoughbys married me to De Mille when I was nineteen. There you have the story of my career in a nutshell.” She rose abruptly. “I must be going,” she said, picking up her hat.

“Just a minute,” interposed Ormsby, almost pleadingly, motioning her to resume her seat. Jane sat down again and looked at him expectantly. His manner seemed to have changed suddenly. His cold gray eyes had taken on a softer, a more human, expression, and they fastened themselves on hers with such an intent gaze that, though she tried to meet it boldly, she found her own glance wavering, and the hot color surged up in her face.

“Supposing, Mrs. De Mille,” he began, apparently unmindful of her confusion, “that a chap different from the sort you’d been accustomed to, one with less polish and with his own way—perhaps a most uncertain one—to make, should come to you and tell you that he loved you—no, wait!” Jane’s lips had parted, as though she were about to speak. “And supposing you felt,” he continued, “that in spite of the man’s uncouthness he was capable of making you love him, if only you consented to give him a chance, do you think——” He paused and studied her for a second with even a more intent gaze, but her eyes were downcast, and her trembling fingers were rapidly tying and untying knots in her lace handkerchief.

“Look at me, please,” he said, authoritatively. Reluctantly, Mrs. De Mille raised her eyes. Her soul shone in them.

“Do you think that if that man told you that your life with him might be a hard one, that the wanderlust was in his bones, and that when it took possession of him he had to fare forth, come what might, you would have the courage to put your hand in his—don’t stir.”

She had turned down, but had not extinguished, the alcohol flame, and an impulsive gesture had brought the lace which hung from the sleeve of her gown in contact with it. Before she had the remotest inkling of what had happened, Ormsby was at her side, smothering the flame with his hands. It was all over in an instant. His quickness had saved her from even the slightest burn, and also from a realization of her danger until that danger was past. She leaned back in her chair feeling rather faint, while Ormsby walked over to a small cabinet, took from it a bottle and rubbed some of its contents on his hands, afterward knotting his handkerchief carelessly around the right one.

“You are burnt!” exclaimed Jane, jumping up as though to go to his assistance.

“A mere trifle,” he answered, indifferently. “It doesn’t even sting.”

She looked at him tremulously. “Your presence of mind saved my life,” she said, in a voice that was not quite steady.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” he replied, rather awkwardly.

“Perhaps not,” said Jane, smiling at him with a suggestion of her old flippancy, “but it’s a great deal to me, you know. It’s the only one I have. Cats can afford to be indifferent in the face of peril until they have exhausted eight of their lives, at any rate, but the rest of us, having only one poor little life, naturally treasure it.”

Ormsby frowned. Wouldn’t she be serious in the face of death, even? Then he remembered the interrupted conversation.

“The alcohol spoiled the pretty little situation I had arranged for my book,” he said, smiling.

“Your book!” echoed Jane, staring at him.

“Yes, you know the question I was about to ask you. Your answer was rather important to me, but you can give it some other time. I advise you now to go straight home and lie down. There must have been some nervous shock.”

“You’re mistaken,” said Jane, who was in truth looking very pale. “I never felt less nervous in my life, and we mustn’t let the book suffer. Now, if you’ll repeat the question—I’m afraid”—penitently—“I wasn’t paying much attention to what you were saying.”

“Oh, well, I fancy you caught the idea of the sort of man I sketched. Would you give up everything for his sake, if you loved him?”

Jane rose and deliberately pinned on her hat, leisurely consulting a tiny chatelaine mirror after she had done so. Then she looked at Ormsby maliciously.

“Give up! Thank you, no! You see, all my life I’ve been giving up things I couldn’t wrest from the Willoughbys or De Mille.

“Not any more in mine, if you please. I should say to that misguided and frightfully sentimental young man: ‘Mend your ways, become rich and famous, and then come back and Jane will consider you.’” She picked up her gloves and walked toward the door of the bungalow.

“Au revoir,” she said; “so good of you to have saved my life.”

“At least,” observed Ormsby, sarcastically, as he hastened to open it for her, “nobody can accuse you of being inconsistent.”

“Billie Scott would shriek if he heard you say so,” observed Jane, as she calmly nodded good-by.

CHAPTER VIII.

Billie Scott had come down for the week end, and he and Jane were motoring.

“What’s up, Jane?” he remarked, suddenly, breaking a lengthy pause in the conversation. “You don’t seem like your usual self.”

“Whom do I seem like?” she inquired, flippantly. Then she went on, indignantly: “Whenever I keep still for a minute or two, or in some other way act like a rational being, everyone is sure there is something up.”

“I merely thought,” observed Mr. Scott, pacifically, “that there might be something worrying you.”

“Nothing worries me except the careless manner in which you drive this car,” answered Jane, sharply for her. “Please put me down at Mrs. Larson’s, Billie.”

“Shall I wait for you?” he asked, as he steered the machine in the direction of the cottage.

“No, indeed”—determinedly—“and, by the way, I think you had better go back to town——”

“But I came down to stay over Sunday,” he cried, in an injured voice.

“I know,” said Jane, “but the Willoughbys like a quiet Sunday, and so do I.”

Mr. Scott whistled.

“Terribly considerate of the Willoughbys’ feelings,” he commented, sarcastically. “I suppose I may stop at the house for my bag?”

The car had pulled up in front of the Larson cottage, and Jane jumped lightly out. She was instantly surrounded by a troop of dirty, noisy children, but she turned from them and smiled sweetly up at the sulky Mr. Scott. “Dear old Billie,” she said, sweetly; “don’t mind me. It’s true I’m not quite myself these days. I think the Willoughbys must be getting on my nerves. Go home and I’ll write you.”

“Oh, Jane, if you would only let me——”

But Mrs. De Mille ruthlessly interrupted him.

“Don’t be sentimental, Billie,” she said, quickly; “and please remember that I’ll not be proposed to every time we meet. Ta! ta!” She gave him her hand, withdrew it quickly and hastened into the Larson cottage. “Damn!” said Mr. Scott, under his breath. Then he got out, bribed with a shower of coin the Larson brood to keep out of his path, and drove drearily away.

Mrs. Larson was an angular, sallow-faced, stoop-shouldered woman, who had seen so much of the dark side of life that she had reached the stage where she couldn’t be persuaded there was any other.

“He’s laid off again, miss,” she announced, darkly, to Jane, who found her scrubbing in the disordered kitchen. Mrs. Larson never used anything but the personal pronoun to designate her spouse, so Jane knew instantly whom she meant.

“Why, what’s the matter now?” she asked, in dismay. “I thought he was going to like his new work. Was he discharged?”

“No, miss, he was not!” In spite of her dejection, Mrs. Larson’s voice revealed a note of pride. “But it was inside work, and he ain’t used to inside work, and he says as how he don’t suppose at his age he ever will get used to it.”

“But surely he could endure it for a little while, until something else turned up!” exclaimed Jane, who was finding the Larsons a heavy responsibility. “What in the world will you do now?” A discussion of the problem of existence, however, was beyond the ability of Mrs. Larson, so she scrubbed for a while in apathetic silence, while Jane thought hard and anxiously.

“He’d like to be a shover,” finally volunteered her hostess.

“A shover!” exclaimed Mrs. De Mille, who was absolutely sure that the leisurely Larson’s view of life was incompatible with any form of employment that called for shoving. His wife nodded her head. “He always was a master hand for going swift, and he thought if he could get a place like Mr. Johnson’s——”

“Oh!” said Jane, suddenly comprehending, “I see. Does he know anything about machinery or about driving a car?”

Mrs. Larson shook her head despondently. “Nothin’, miss. It’s just his fondness for goin’ swift that made him think of it.”

“It’s just like him to wish to ‘go swift’ at somebody else’s expense,” thought Jane, scornfully, but she felt a delicacy about expressing her opinion of Larson to his wife, so another sorrowful pause ensued. It was broken by a lusty yell from the new Larson baby in the next room.

“Let me go to her,” said Jane, rising quickly, and Mrs. Larson indifferently acquiesced. Babies were no novelty to her and she could not understand her guest’s enthusiasm. Mrs. De Mille returned to the kitchen with the baby in her arms and seated herself near the open window. The youngest scion of the house of Larson was dressed in an expensive but dirty robe, and Jane looked at its mother reproachfully.

“You should not let her wear her christening robe every day, Mrs. Larson,” she protested.

“I know, miss,” answered Mrs. Larson, apologetically, “but she don’t appear to sleep comfortable in nothin’ else.” Jane sighed, but, she reasoned humbly, it was not for her to preach economy to the improvident Larsons. The fact of the matter is that Mrs. De Mille was feeling in an exceedingly chastened mood these days, and even Aunt Susan found little cause for complaint. To-day as she sat “clucking” softly to the Larson baby, which crowed happily in response, she felt that even her bedraggled and weary-looking hostess had obtained from life something more worth while than it had vouchsafed her, and a wave of self-pity swept over her.

“Goo-goo!” shrieked the baby, in an ecstasy of delight, and, flinging up a dimpled fist, it clutched determinedly at the lace at Jane’s throat. The magnetic touch of the tiny fingers proved Mrs. De Mille’s undoing, and, to the astonishment and disgust of the youngest Larson, she burst into tears.

“Land sakes!” exclaimed Mrs. Larson, dropping her scrubbing brush and hastening to the side of her guest. “Did it jab you in the eye?” She made an effort to take her offspring from Jane, but the latter resisted.

“It—it isn’t the baby’s fault,” she sobbed, feeling that she was acting in a very ridiculous way, but unable to control herself. “I was just wishing I had a baby of my own.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Larson, understandingly, and then her red and ugly arms, which her sleeveless waist revealed, were slipped about Jane, and the two women mingled their tears exactly as though no gulf of opportunity and education yawned between them.

Larson had been pointed out to John Ormsby as the only man in Rosemount who was not above doing an errand, provided he was well paid for it, and Ormsby had started out in search of him. He took a short cut to the Larson cabin, approaching that humble domicile by way of the rear, and while he was still within half a block of the premises he recognized the graceful curve of Mrs. De Mille’s back through the open window. With no consciousness of eavesdropping, he strained his ears to catch her words as he came nearer, for invariably he found her gay stream of nonsense stimulating. But the look of anticipation changed to one of profound surprise as the dwindling distance between him and the cottage made him spectator of the little scene enacted in the Larsons’ untidy kitchen.

“By Jove!” he murmured, in his bewilderment. The disgusted and temporarily neglected Larson infant, who was hanging over Jane’s shoulder while that lady and its mother wept, caught a glimpse of the man outside, and, perhaps, recognized in his look of astonishment a reflex of its own feelings.

“Ah, goo,” it called out, tearfully, waving one hand feebly but sympathetically.

“By Jove!” muttered Mr. Ormsby again, and then turned suddenly, and made his way with surprising but quiet dispatch down the path up which he had come. The Larson baby, choosing to regard his retreat in the light of a desertion, raised a lusty howl, which instantly brought Jane and his mother to their senses.

Ormsby meanwhile had repaired to the bungalow. From the drawer of the table which he used for a desk he took a bundle of closely written sheets and began to thumb them over, pausing here and there to read a passage. The more he read, the more dissatisfied he looked, and finally he rolled the papers up again and thrust them contemptuously on the table. Then he took out his pipe, filled it and lighted it, and puffed away in silence for a while. Presently he removed it and looked once more at the manuscript lying on the table.

“By Jove!” he ejaculated once more, and then replaced his pipe and went on smoking.

Half an hour later Mrs. Moore, the venerable dame with whom he boarded, found him still sitting before the table, staring thoughtfully at the manuscript, his pipe out. She gave him a telegram and watched him inquisitively while he read it. “I have to run up to New York to-morrow,” he said, without looking up. “Have an early breakfast, please.”

His landlady, who never spoke unless it was absolutely necessary, nodded solemnly and withdrew, and Ormsby took out some paper and began to write a note. When he had finished he read it over and then deliberately tore it up. Five other notes which he wrote shared the same fate. Finally he indited a brief one and addressed it to Mrs. De Mille. It informed her tersely that he had been called to town and would not return for three days. Sealing it, he went to the door of the bungalow, and, after whistling vigorously for five minutes, succeeded in attracting the attention of a tow-headed youngster, who was walking leisurely up the dust road.

“Take this up to Willoughby Hall at once,” ordered Ormsby, sternly, slipping a coin into the grimy paw.

“Yep,” answered the boy, cheerfully, and obediently trotted off in the direction of the architectural monstrosity on the hill, Ormsby relentlessly following him with his eyes until he was out of sight. Alas! A grove of firs intervened between the bungalow and the house on the hill, and it was in this grove that the tow-headed urchin dropped responsibility, thrust the note and coin in his pocket and “skinned” a tree for a nest. The coin was spent that very night, but it was not until a week later that, looking for a grasshopper he had carefully stowed away in his pocket, the recreant one came across Ormsby’s note. The discovery was timely, for he was in need just then of a bit of paper to polish his agate bottle, a new treasure.

CHAPTER IX.

It was raining; not spasmodically, with a suggestion of lifting skies between frenzied outbursts, but steadily, drearily, insistently. Jane, sitting up in bed, drew the down coverlet cozily about her bare neck and half-clad arms, while she despondently looked out through the window at the dripping landscape.

“Rain is bad enough in the city,” she mused, “but it’s simply impossible in the country. There, at least, you can get away from it, but here it seems to be all over.” There was a tap on the door.

“Come,” she called, and a maid entered with an appetizing breakfast on a tray. “Good-morning, Blanche,” said Jane. “Tell me what you do on a rainy day. You and Johnson won’t be able to walk out this evening.”

“We sits in the kitchen, miss,” said the little maid, primly, blushing to the roots of her mouse-colored hair. “Cook goes to bed early.”

“Very obliging of cook,” commented Jane, as she sipped her coffee. “And that reminds me, Blanche, I want to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me truthfully. Are you trifling with Johnson?”

“Me, miss?” The maid’s face grew redder than ever, but she tossed her head. “I’m not triflin’. Mr. Johnson keeps a-sayin’ as how he’s very fond o’ me, but I tells ’im he’s a city chap and says the same to all th’ gurls.”

“You’re right, Blanche, all the Johnsons are a bad lot,” said Jane, pessimistically. “However”—for the little maid’s face looked suddenly downcast—“I believe Johnson is one of the best of them, and that his intentions are serious.” The maid beamed. “And I would feel sorry to have you trifle with him, because I feel responsible for him while he’s down here. Avoid the reputation of being a flirt, Blanche.” Jane looked pensive. “It’s the hardest in the world to live down.”

“Yes’m,” said the maid, politely. “Is there anythink I can do for you?” She adored Jane, and spent hours trying to do her hair the way Mrs. De Mille did hers.

“No, I think not. Have the Willoughbys had breakfast?”

“Hours ago, miss,” answered Blanche. Jane smiled. This breakfast in bed represented one of her most memorable victories over Aunt Susan, and imparted a particularly delicious flavor to her coffee and rolls.

“Well, take the tray; I’ll get up in an hour or so,” said Jane, deliberately composing herself for another nap.

She dreamed of the bungalow and of Ormsby, and, when she finally dressed, it was with the defeated feeling of one who has striven hard to put certain thoughts out of her head, but who finds that they have taken possession even of her dreams.

She saw Uncle Jacob and Aunt Susan for the first time at the luncheon table. The rain was still falling with what Jane called disgusting pertinacity.

“Of course you’re not going out a day like this,” said Mrs. Willoughby, in the disapproving voice she seemed to reserve for Jane and her husband. By “out” she meant the bungalow. Until Aunt Susan had spoken, Mrs. De Mille had made up her mind that a visit to the bungalow on such a day was out of the question, and that Ormsby would not expect her. Now, however, she found herself saying, perversely: “Out! Of course I’m going out. A woman who works for a living cannot afford to mind a little rain. I have an appointment at the bungalow with Mr. Ormsby, and I have to keep it.”

Aunt Susan sniffed. “The neighbors are commenting——”

Jane held up a reproachful finger. “No gossip, aunt!” she said, rebukingly. “Don’t you think that living in the country has a tendency—just a slight tendency—to make people too deeply interested in their neighbors’ affairs?” Jane looked excessively virtuous. “I’d hate, Aunt Susan, to have you degenerate. But one has to be so careful!”

Mrs. Willoughby deigned no response, and finished the meal in stony silence. Uncle Jacob, who found himself unable to carry on a peaceful conversation with Jane and his wife both present, stealthily perused the columns of a belated city paper he held on his knee.

Immediately after her luncheon, Jane went to her room and got together her rainy-day things. When she sallied forth presently, she wore a coquettish-looking cap, a short, mannish coat and a skirt that was short enough to reveal not only a pair of the thinnest and most absurdly small Louis Quinze shoes, but a good bit of thin silk stocking as well. Jane, as she tripped along, surveyed her feet ruefully. “I know he’ll say something sarcastic about my shoes,” she mused, “and they are ridiculous for a day like this, and I’ve no doubt they do show I haven’t a scrap of common sense—though I know women who never wear anything but common-sense shoes who haven’t any common sense to boast of. It’s simply a question of whether you’re athletic or not. Besides, I can explain to him that I really did try to wear a pair of Blanche’s, but they slipped off when they were buttoned up, and he’ll have to admit that it’s much better for me to arrive at the bungalow in my own shoes, even though they’re more ridiculous, than in my stocking feet—which would have been the case had I worn Blanche’s. I’ll tell——” Jane pulled herself up sharp with a sudden, angry flush. “I don’t know,” she said out loud, sharply, “why you’re always trying to placate him, Jane De Mille! Where’s your independence gone to?” Then she fixed her eyes firmly on the distant horizon and her thoughts on a new summer gown and marched independently on.

To find the bungalow locked was like a blow to her, and when she faced about to return home she felt suddenly very cold, very wet, very miserable and very forlorn. Then she recollected that he had told her once that there was always a key under the mat in case she should come to the bungalow when he wasn’t there, and, reluctant to return to the dreariness of the Willoughby house, she searched for this, and, finding it, thrust it in the keyhole and opened the door. There was no fire in the fireplace, but there was material for one beside it, and, kneeling down in front of the cavernous opening, Jane laboriously constructed one and held out her hands gratefully to the warmth when the flames darted forth. She surveyed the room over her shoulder and was chilled afresh by its deserted air. “Can he have gone away without a word?” she wondered, and paled at the thought.

“It’s no use denying you’re in a very bad way about this Ormsby, Jane De Mille,” she reflected, pensively surveying the dancing flames. “You’re rapidly losing all your independence, and, what’s worse, your self-respect. And you haven’t the remotest reason for believing that he cares a scrap for you.”

She rose presently, and, moving his chair over to the fireplace, sat down in it and held out first one and then the other little high-heeled boot to dry. “If he loved me,” she observed to herself, “I really wouldn’t mind wearing thick soles and low heels.”

Her shoes dry, she began to move restlessly about the room. Now, it is a curious fact that Jane had never expressed and never felt any curiosity about the book Ormsby was writing, though she knew that she was furnishing the material for the heroine. In spite of herself, almost unconsciously, indeed, at first, she had become so absorbed in the writer that the book became of secondary importance. Today, however, his absence made everything that was intimately associated with him of interest to her, since they served, in a way, as a substitute for him. She picked up his pipe and held it caressingly against her cheek, and then, with a guilty start, set it down again. She dropped her head on an open book he had evidently been reading, and her eyes were dewy when she raised it. She came upon, finally, the bundle of papers he had tossed contemptuously on the table the night before, and recognized it as the manuscript upon which he had been working. She regarded it thoughtfully for a while and then her face brightened.

“Why, how stupid of me!” she exclaimed, aloud, and, going back to his chair, she seated herself in it once more and smoothed out the sheets.

“He can’t possibly object to my reading it,” she reasoned, “since I’m in it, and it’s soon to be public property.” She stared at the title. “‘A Woman,’” she read aloud—“that’s me, I suppose. Why”—with an odd, breathless little laugh—“it will be exactly like seeing for the first time a portrait done of yourself by some great painter—one of those artists who pay more attention to the soul than to the hair or the mouth or the eyes. I’ll see myself as somebody else sees me. It’s—it’s going to be terribly exciting.”

Yet, in spite of the curiosity she professed, Jane did not begin at once to read. Instead, she dropped the manuscript in her lap and stared for a while into the fire, her chin propped on her hand. Her thoughts ran on something like this: “You’ve never had such an awfully good time, Jane De Mille, though you’ve put up what Billie would call a pretty stiff bluff. You’ve never had anybody to really and truly care for you, unless it be Uncle Jacob, though plenty of people have admired you for what good looks you have or because you didn’t bore them. But if you should discover that somebody loved you for yourself alone, thought you a little better, perhaps, than you really are, you know—why, it’s just possible——” A catch in her breath put a stop to her reflections, and she unrolled the manuscript and began to read.

The fire was dying down, but, tenacious of life as some very old man who has prolonged his years through will power alone, it shot forth unexpected flames at infrequent intervals. These lighted up Jane’s face, and such changes did they reveal with each succeeding appearance that they might have been the withering years. The patter of the rain on the roof, the rustle of the sheets as they fell from her hand and fluttered to the floor, the occasional sputter of the fire—these for the next two hours were the only sounds heard in the bungalow. When the last page joined the others that lay scattered about in disorder on the floor, Mrs. De Mille stared for a few seconds straight ahead of her, and then, with a quivering sigh, buried her head on the arm of the chair and began to cry.

It lacked half an hour of dinner time, and Jacob Willoughby sat alone in the stuffy library. The owner of Willoughby Hall was not what could be called sentimental, but in the twilight hour, and especially when the weather necessitated an open fire, he was apt, if Susan Willoughby was in a remote part of the house, to let his thoughts stray back to a time when she was not, so far as Jacob Willoughby was concerned, and when a slim young creature, addicted to pink and blue muslins, but with neither family nor prospects, was the sun of his days, the moon and stars of his nights. He had been sensible and never regretted it—that is, hardly ever. To-night, however, the dancing flames that glorified the dull room reminded him of the grace of his boyhood’s love, and the dreary splash, splash, of the rain outside, of the gray monotony of the years that lay behind him and of those other dull and purposeless years that stretched out before him.

And when presently a pale Jane broke in upon this reverie, Jacob was forced to brush his hands across his eyes twice to make sure it was Jane and not the slim young creature to whom he had brought the early crocuses in the springtime of his youth. Neither knew exactly how it happened, but Jane found herself sobbing out her story on Uncle Jacob’s broad bosom, and feeling strangely comforted by the tender pressure of his pudgy hand upon her shoulder. When she cried out that she could not stand it to have that hateful book come out, and to listen to the comments upon it, it was Uncle Jacob who suggested that a trip abroad might accomplish wonders in the way of making her forget both the man and the book. Not that he believed it—he lied gallantly there—but he had his reward in seeing the face he loved brighten somewhat.

And when Jane stole away with a check in her hand, leaving him to explain to Aunt Susan her absence from dinner and her early departure in the morning, in spite of the ordeal that lay before him, there was a warm glow underneath the white vest, a glow which even the approaching grenadier-like tread of Aunt Susan could not dispel.

CHAPTER X.

It was the last Tuesday in November, and Mrs. Hardenburgh was giving the first of her usual series of at-homes. An inveterate lion hunter was this clever woman of sixty-odd summers, whose hair was as thick and golden as a dÉbutante’s, and whose complexion as pink and white. This afternoon she was in a particularly complacent mood, for she had arranged a piquant double attraction for her guests. When, however, by six o’clock, both attractions had failed to materialize, the faintest suggestion of a frown appeared on her remarkably smooth brow. Five minutes later the appearance of a newcomer had dispelled it, and the hostess was her humorous, smiling self.

The newcomer was Jane—Jane in a gown every line of which spoke Paris, in a dream of a hat that sat on her proud little head like a coronet; Jane, in short, in a perfect get-up and in radiant health and spirits. Personally, we’d prefer to set it down that she looked pale, distrait; that “concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,” etc.; but it would not be true. Whatever the suffering within—and there was a rather deep, intent look about the eyes—Mrs. De Mille presented an unconquered, nay, a self-satisfied, front to this little New York world, and was looking her very best.

As she made her way slowly down the long room to where her hostess stood, it occurred to her that she was causing something of a sensation. At first she modestly ascribed it to the fact that she had been away for six months, and that this was her first public appearance since her return. It dawned upon her presently, however, that the rooms were filled with strangers, principally, and as the interest deepened rather than lessened with her slow advance, she was forced to acknowledge to herself that something beside her lengthened absence was responsible for the attention she was receiving. The more puzzled she grew, the more confidently she carried herself, and when a very young bud in a very high treble agitatedly remarked to a blasÉ youth: “She’s not a bit disappointing, is she?” it expressed in words the verdict of the rooms.

After greeting Mrs. Hardenburgh, the first familiar face Jane encountered was Mr. Scott’s.

“So you’ve gone and gotten yourself engaged, faithless one?” she observed, reproachfully, after they had shaken hands.

“Oh, I say, Jane——” he began, in exactly the same tone with which he was wont, in the past, to preface one of his numerous proposals.

Jane regarded him with mock horror. “Billie, Billie, don’t tell me you are going to propose!” she exclaimed, disapprovingly. “One rather expects proposals from the married men nowadays, but from newly engaged ones, fie! fie!”

Mr. Scott colored high. “You can’t think how the sight of you makes my heart beat,” he said, agitatedly.

“Nonsense!” retorted Jane, snubbingly. “Point out your girl instantly.”

Pulling himself together with a palpable effort, Mr. Scott indicated a sparkling brunette, one of a group of dÉbutantes who were watching Jane with intense interest. “Why, she’s adorable!” exclaimed Mrs. De Mille. “Present me.” And Mr. Scott, looking suddenly very proud, offered his arm.

“I’ve read the book,” murmured the little brunette, ecstatically, after Jane had offered her felicitations. “It must be beautiful to be written about like that.”

Mrs. De Mille stared and then grew pale. “The book!” she echoed. “I—I don’t know what you mean!”

“Why, I thought——” began Mr. Scott’s pretty fiancÉe, looking as though she regretted her own impulsiveness. But before she had a chance to explain, a tall and extremely well-dressed young matron bore down upon Jane and triumphantly carried her off.

“How well you’re looking, Betty,” observed Jane, surveying her friend rather wistfully, when they were seated in a quiet corner.

“That’s because I’m so happy,” answered that lady, promptly. “Maurice is such a dear! And now, Jane, tell me, when is the engagement to be announced?”

Mrs. De Mille opened her eyes very wide. “Engagement!” she cried. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Whose engagement?”

“Why, yours and Mr. Ormsby’s,” retorted her friend. “Every line of the book shows he’s desperately in love with you. Did you refuse him?”

Jane clutched Mrs. McClurg’s hand. “Is that awful book out, and does everybody think it’s me?” she demanded, in a voice that trembled in spite of her effort to control it.

Mrs. McClurg looked at her in astonishment. “Awful book!” she exclaimed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Mr. Ormsby’s novel is the success of the year, and the heroine is an extremely flattering picture of you. All your friends have recognized it, and they all agree with me.”

Jane rose. “If my friends think I’m the heartless and idiotic creature that book pictures, then I have no friends,” she said, coldly. “Good-by, Betty.” She turned to go, but Mrs. McClurg caught her hand.

“I don’t believe you’ve read the book, Jane de Mille,” she said. “The heroine is not heartless. She’s a perfectly adorable creature, and everybody—all the women envy you.”

“I haven’t seen the book,” admitted Jane, “but I read the manuscript, and my recollection is that the author placed me a good deal lower than the angels, to state it mildly. I never want to see it.”

“I can’t understand; there must be some mistake!” exclaimed Mrs. McClurg. “Just wait here a minute.” She glided out from behind the screen of palms, and, after a brief absence, came back to the nook with a small, quietly bound little book in her hand. “Read that!” she commanded, triumphantly, opening it and pointing to the title-page.

Reluctantly Jane raised her eyes and took in the brief contents. “The Woman, by John Ormsby,” she read, and then, underneath, a single line, “To her who inspired it,” and underneath that again this fragment of verse:

“Betty.” Jane lifted her head and looked at her friend with sudden inspiration.

“Well,” retorted Mrs. McClurg, not too enthusiastically, for it had just occurred to her that Mrs. De Mille had concealed a great deal.

“I want to sneak, and I want to take this book with me,” explained the latter, shamelessly. “I don’t believe I have read it. Can you—will you cover my retreat?”

Mrs. McClurg looked only half appeased and dubious. “Mr. Ormsby is coming here this afternoon,” she said, severely. “I happen to know that Mrs. Hardenburgh has been rejoicing at the thought that you were to meet here in her drawing room.”

“Neat little arrangement,” observed Jane, ironically. Then she became suddenly frightened. “I must go at once,” she said. “Oh, Betty, don’t you see that I can’t see him here? Help me, there’s a good girl, and come to me to-morrow—I have the same apartment, you know—and I’ll tell you everything.”

And Mrs. McClurg, who was by no means hard-hearted, relented. When the big doors finally closed upon Jane, she gave a sigh of relief, but it ended with a gasp, for she found herself face to face with John Ormsby, who, immaculately attired, was ascending the brownstone steps.

“How d’ye do?” said Mrs. De Mille, airily, extending her hand and hoping fervently at the same time that the book which she had tucked away underneath her arm was invisible.

He took her hand, but did not respond to her salutation, only gazed hungrily into her face.

“Where in the world have you been hiding yourself?” he demanded, finally, when Jane, with an effort, had removed her hand.

“Sounds as though I were a criminal,” commented Jane. “Did you miss any spoons at the bungalow?”

He did not answer, only continued to stare at her, and so she went on, nervously: “I’ve been in Paris chiefly. Some people don’t like Paris in the summer time, but I adore it. But you’re Mrs. Hardenburgh’s lion. I mustn’t detain you. Au revoir!” She started down the steps, but he followed her determinedly. “If you think I’m going to lose sight of you after my long search, you’re mistaken,” he said, quietly.

“Mrs. Hardenburgh will be furious, and you will be very impolite, if you don’t go in at once,” said Jane, tucking the little book further out of sight.

“I loathe those things,” he answered, disrespectfully. “I only consented to come because I was told you might be there. But if Paradise was just inside, and——”

“Hades,” interrupted Jane, demurely.

“And you were outside, nothing would induce me to go in.”

“The inference is so odious I refuse to be flattered,” she said, “but you never were good at making pretty speeches. If you’re coming with me”—briskly—“you’ll have to walk. I’m economizing. Uncle Jacob is giving me an allowance, and I’m living on it.”

“But you’re rich, or almost rich, in your own right,” said Mr. Ormsby, as they walked along. “The book promises to be preposterously successful, and half the royalties are yours, you know.”

Jane grew suddenly frigid. “I beg that you will not refer to that wretched affair,” she said, haughtily. “I have not read your book, and I am not interested in it.”

Mr. Ormsby’s face became very downcast. “I was in hopes that you had read it, and that it would explain——”

“There is really nothing to explain,” interrupted Jane. “I acted on a reckless impulse, and was bored for my pains. I have no wish to read your book, though”—civilly—“I’m glad for your sake it promises to be a success.”

Mrs. De Mille’s fall followed fast on the heels of her little exhibition of pride. A boy hurrying by with a bundle jostled her arm, and the book she had been endeavoring to conceal fell to the pavement. In stooping to recover it, Mr. Ormsby recognized it, but he returned it to her without comment, and Jane perversely chose to feel affronted at his silence.

“I met a friend at Mrs. Hardenburgh’s who was quite enthusiastic about the book, and to please her I consented to take it home to read,” she exclaimed, coldly.

“I would not bother myself about it, if I were you; it’s a poor thing,” he returned, just as coldly. They walked for a square in silence, a silence that, strange to relate, was not broken first by Jane but by her companion.

“I have an explanation to make, and, in spite of the risk I run of further offending you, I must make it,” he said, distantly. “When I wrote that first absurd sketch I did not understand you. I thought that you were as frivolous and as heartless as you appeared on the surface.”

“Indeed!” commented Jane, tilting her chin scornfully. “And then something happened——” he paused.

“What was it?” she asked, eagerly, and bit her lip in vexation at herself for displaying curiosity.

“I’m not going to tell you that,” he responded, coolly, “but it helped me to an understanding of you. And then I was called to New York, and I found when I got back that you had been at the bungalow—you left your handkerchief there, you know—and that you had read the sketch, for the papers were scattered about the floor, and I realized that——” he hesitated.

“You realized what?” said Jane, defiantly.

“That I loved you,” he concluded, quietly.

The acknowledgment was so unexpected that it disconcerted Mrs. De Mille, and she had nothing to say.

“I suppose that bores you, too?” he said, half ironically.

“This is where I live,” was her only response. They had reached the entrance to a smart uptown apartment house, and Jane paused. Her tone was not exactly a dismissal one, and, as she faced him, Ormsby stared at her anxiously.

“Is there—can there be any hope for me——” he began.

“While there’s life there’s hope, you know,” retorted Jane, frivolously. “But I was just about to suggest that if you’re quite certain you don’t want to go back to Mrs. Hardenburgh’s, I’ll give you a cup of tea.”

Her tone was noncommittal, but as she led the way to the elevator, she looked back at him over her shoulder and laughed softly, and a great joy transfigured John Ormsby’s face.