young men would know her, I'll be bound, and you among them, Dr. Martin.
Any woman who isn't a fright gets stared at enough to be known again."

Could this woman know any thing of Olivia? I looked at her more
earnestly and critically. She was not a person I should like Olivia to
have any thing to do with. A coarse, ill-bred, bold woman, whose eyes
met mine unabashed, and did not blink under my scrutiny. Could she be
Olivia's step-mother, who had been the ruin of her life?

"I'd bet a hundred to one you know her," she said, laughing and showing
all her white teeth. "A girl like her couldn't go about a little poky
place like this without all the young men knowing her. Perhaps she left
the island in the spring. I have asked at all the drapers' shops, but
nobody recollects her. I've very good news for her if I could find
her--a slim, middle-sized girl, with a clear, fair skin, and gray eyes,
and hair of a bright brown. Stay, I can show you her photograph."

She put into my hands an exquisite portrait of Olivia, taken in
Florence. There was an expression of quiet mournfulness in the face,
which touched me to the core of my heart. I could not put it down and
speak indifferently about it. My heart beat wildly, and I felt tempted
to run off with the treasure and return no more to this woman.

"Ah! you recognize her!" she exclaimed triumphantly.

"I never saw such a person in Guernsey," I answered, looking steadily
into her face. A sullen and gloomy expression came across it, and she
snatched the portrait out of my hand.

"You want to keep it a secret," she said, "but I defy you to do it. I am
come here to find her, and find her I will. She hasn't drowned herself,
and the earth hasn't swallowed her up. I've traced her as far as here,
and that I tell you. She crossed in the Southampton boat one dreadfully
stormy night last October--the only lady passenger--and the stewardess
recollects her well. She landed here. You must know something about
her."

"I assure you I never saw that girl here," I replied, evasively. "What
inquiries have you made after her?"

"I've inquired here, and there, and everywhere," she said. "I've done
nothing else ever since I came. It is of great importance to her, as
well as to me, that I should find her. It's a very anxious thing when a
girl like that disappears and is never heard of again, all because she
has a little difference with her friends. If you could help me to find
her you would do he