Truthful Jane. Florence Morse Kingsley
finality.
"Jane, you forget yourself!"
"No, aunt; you are mistaken. I am not forgetting myself; I am remembering that I am an Aubrey-Blythe."
Lady Agatha stared blankly at the girl for a full minute. Then she recovered herself. "You are an ungrateful, impertinent girl!" she said slowly. "If you were younger I should feel it my duty to ferule you severely. There is one other thing I wish to speak to you about; then you may go. I have observed that you are far too familiar and presuming in your manner toward your cousin Reginald. His future position in the world as my oldest son and his father's heir does not warrant any such attitude on your part."
"Did Reginald tell you that he tried to kiss me on the stairs last night, and that I slapped him for it?" inquired Jane, in a businesslike tone. "It was 'familiar' of me, I admit; but Reginald is such a cub, you know."
Lady Agatha rose to her full height. "You may go to your room, Jane, and stay there for the remainder of the day," she said in an awful voice. "I see that my Christian charity is entirely misplaced in your case. I shall, after all, be obliged to consult your uncle with regard to some other disposal of your person. I cannot bear you about me longer. Your influence on my dear children is most unfortunate!"
Jane turned sharply—she already had her hand upon the door. "I hope uncle will send me away!" she exclaimed passionately. "I hate this house and everyone in it—except Percy and Susan!"
Lady Agatha, shaken out of her usual icy self-control, darted forward. She was a tall, big woman and she swept the girl before her in a blast of cold fury up the stairs—two flights of them—to the little attic room; there she thrust the slight figure within, and locked the door upon it.
Jane stood in the middle of the floor and listened to the ugly click of the key and the sound of Lady Agatha's retreating boot heels on the uncarpeted corridor.
"Well," said Jane ruefully. "I have made a mess of it!" She had completely forgotten her prayer of the night before.
Somebody had laid a fire in her rusty little grate. It was Susan, of course, who was continually going out of her way to be kind to the girl to whom everyone else was so persistently and pointedly unkind. Jane's sore heart warmed toward honest Susan, as she hunted for a match in the ugly little safe on the mantel. "I've a day off, anyway," she told herself, "and I'll cobble up that old gown of Gwen's so that I can wear it."
Miss Blythe was well used to cobbling up old gowns and clever at it, too. She waxed increasingly cheerful as she spread the faded breadths across her knee and discovered that the wrong side of the fabric was fresh and bright. Later she congratulated herself upon a stray sheet of The Times, left behind by Susan after laying the fire; it would do admirably for pattern material. As she spread its crumpled folds upon her counterpane, preparatory to evolving a wonderful yoke design, her eye fell upon a line in the column of "Female Help Wanted." It read as follows:
"A lady about to travel in America wishes to engage intelligent young female as companion. Good wages. Duties nominal. Apply mornings to Mrs. Augustus Markle, 10 Belgravia Crescent."
"Oh!" murmured Jane Blythe. She sank down on the edge of her hard little bed and read the fateful lines again. "A lady about to travel in America—an intelligent young female as traveling companion. Why, I am an intelligent young female!" exclaimed Jane, with the air of a discoverer; "I wonder if I look the part?"
She stared at her young reflection in the dim mirror over her little dressing table. "I believe I look sufficiently 'intelligent' to perform 'nominal duties' as a companion," she told herself candidly. Then she hunted for the date of the paper, and was ready to shed tears of disappointment when she discovered that it was that of the previous day.
"There are so many intelligent young females, and I suppose everyone of them would like to travel in America," said Jane, still eying the brown-eyed young person in the glass. "Besides, I'm locked in."
The brown eyes twinkled as they turned toward the one window of the attic room. More than once, when she was a small girl, Jane had escaped from durance vile by way of the projecting gutter just outside her window. It was a perilous feat; but Jane was muscular and agile as a boy, and of a certain defiant courage withal, born perhaps of her unhappy lot in life.
"It would vex Aunt Agatha frightfully if I should fall and get killed on the conservatory roof," murmured Jane, as she pinned up her long skirts securely, "and it would cost Uncle Robert a whole lot in broken glass and potted plants and things; but I don't care!"
In another minute she had crawled out of her little window and commenced her dangerous journey to a neighboring window, which, luckily for the bold adventuress, stood wide open. Twice the girl's cautious feet slipped unsteadily on a bit of ice, and once the gutter itself cracked ominously under her weight; but at last she gained the window, climbed in, and sank white and shaken to the floor.
"Jane Blythe, you must be losing your nerve," she told herself sternly, when she had gathered sufficient strength to stumble dizzily to her feet; "the last time you tried that you didn't turn a hair!"
The rest was easy, and in less than an hour's time Miss Blythe found herself ringing the bell at 10 Belgravia Crescent. The slatternly maid, distinguished by the traditional smudge over one eye, informed her that Mrs. Markle was within, and in the same breath that she was "clean wore out with interviewin' young females."
Jane's heart sank; nevertheless she bestowed a sixpence upon the dingy maid with an air of regal unconcern, and was straightway ushered into the presence of Mrs. Augustus Markle, with a flourish of the dingy one's plaided pinafore and the brief announcement: "'Ere's another of 'em, ma'am!"
The stout lady, solidly enthroned upon a sofa before the dispirited fire, did not turn her elaborately coiffured head.
"Ze young woman may come in," intoned a full, rich, foreign-sounding voice which somewhat prepared Jane for the large, dark, highly colored visage, flanked with dubious diamond eardrops, which Mrs. Markle turned upon her visitor.
"You wis' to inquire about ze situation—eh?" pursued this individual, without any token of impatience. "I haf already seen feefty of ze London demoiselles ce matin."
"Oh, if you have already engaged some one, I will not trouble you!" stammered Jane, edging toward the door.
"Not so fast—not so fast, madmoiselle; it iss true I haf already engage; but— Ah, zis iss bettaire! More chic—oui. Your name, s'il vous plait?"
"Jane Evelyn Aubrey-Blythe," murmured the girl.
"An' you wis' to go to ze ozzer side—to America—oui?"
"I wish to leave London; yes."
"To-morrow evenin', zen, I go by ze train. Zen I sail on ze so gra-a-nd ship. You go wiz me—eh?"
Jane stared at the woman with some astonishment. "What would be my—my duties?" she asked.
"Your duties? Why, to go wiz me—my compagnon de voyage—comprenez? Nossing else, I assure you; I wait on myself. But I am—what you call it—lone-some—see? An' I require a nize, young lady to go wiz me."
Mrs. Markle smiled affably, revealing a double row of glistening white teeth. She looked very kind and good-natured, and Jane drew a quick breath.
"I will go," she said decidedly.
The final arrangements were quickly concluded, and Jane presently found herself walking down the street, her cheeks flushed, her brown eyes blazing with excitement.
"I am going to America to-morrow—to-morrow!" she told herself. "I shall travel! I shall see the world! I shall never—never come back!"
The girl was so absorbed in her thoughts, which had for the moment flown quite across seas to the America of her imaginings, that she failed to see the tall, square-shouldered person who had turned the corner and was approaching her at a leisurely pace. She became aware of his presence when he spoke, and flushed an indignant