ted to talk to me," she answered evasively.

Her mother looked at her nervously, wanly.

"I have been so afraid, oh, so afraid. Your father went to your
room, but I said you were asleep. He locked the front door, but I
opened it again. When Bass came in he wanted to call you, but I
persuaded him to wait until morning."

Again she looked wistfully at her daughter.

"I'm all right, mamma," said Jennie encouragingly. "I'll tell you
all about it to-morrow. Go to bed. How does he think Bass got
out?"

"He doesn't know. He thought maybe they just let him go because he
couldn't pay the fine."

Jennie laid her hand lovingly on her mother's shoulder.

"Go to bed," she said.

She was already years older in thought and act. She felt as though
she must help her mother now as well as herself.

The days which followed were ones of dreamy uncertainty to Jennie.
She went over in her mind these dramatic events time and time and time
and again. It was not such a difficult matter to tell her mother that
the Senator had talked again of marriage, that he proposed to come and
get her after his next trip to Washington, that he had given her a
hundred dollars and intended to give her more, but of that other
matter--the one all-important thing, she could not bring herself
to speak. It was too sacred. The balance of the money that he had
promised her arrived by messenger the following day, four hundred
dollars in bills, with the admonition that she should put it in a
local bank. The ex-Senator explained that he was already on his way to
Washington, but that he would come back or send for her. "Keep a stout
heart," he wrote. "There are better days in store for you."

Brander was gone, and Jennie's fate was really in the balance. But
her mind still retained all of the heart-innocence, and
unsophistication of her youth; a certain gentle wistfulness was the
only outward change in her demeanor. He would surely send for her.
There was the mirage of a distant country and wondrous scenes looming
up in her mind. She had a little fortune in the bank, more than she
had ever dreamed of, with which to help her mother. There were
natural, girlish anticipations of good still holding over, which made
her less apprehensive than she could otherwise possibly have been. All
nature, life, possibility was in the balance. It might turn good, or
ill, but with so inexperienced a soul it would not be entirely evil
until it was so.

How a mind under such un