a bit. If ever
I want one, she's the first person I mean to ask."

With this declaration Jill had to rest content. It solaced her sorrow
vastly; and even though Rosalind, to whom she confided the compact under
a pledge of secrecy, scolded and laughed at her alternately, she felt a
new prospect open before her, and set herself resolutely to the task of
growing up worthy of Mr

Armstrong's affection.

But amid all these troubles and hopes at Maxfield, two questions were on
every one's lips: "Where was Roger? Where was Robert Ratman?"

Roger had written once after reaching Paris, a letter full of hope,
which had arrived a few days before Captain Oliphant's death. He had
succeeded at last in tracking the man Pantalzar to a low lodging in the
city, and from him had ascertained somewhat of the history of the Callot
family. They had lodged with him at Long Street in London, where they
had given lessons in acting, elocution, and music; and Pantalzar clearly
remembered the lad Rogers as a constant visitor at the house, partly in
the capacity of a promising student of the dramatic art, and partly as a
hopeless lover of his preceptor's wayward daughter.

After a year, his troubles in the latter capacity were abruptly cut
short by the illness and death of the young lady; a blow which staggered
the parents and broke up the establishment at Long Street. It failed,
however, to drive Rogers from the party, who, with a romantic loyalty,
attached himself to the fortunes of the old people, and became like a
son to them in their distresses.

Eventually the bereaved family migrated to Paris, whence Pantalzar had
once heard from the father, who had found employment as stall manager of
a third-rate theatre in one of the _fauxbourg_. Hither Roger tracked
him, and after dogged search, often baffled, sometimes apparently
hopeless, discovered some one who remembered the reputed son of the old
couple, who, as far as this witness could remember, was thought to have
hired himself out as billiard-marker in an hotel in one of the southern
suburbs of the city.

Thus far he had succeeded when he wrote home. What transpired
subsequently, and how he dropped for a season out of all knowledge, the
reader already knows.

The suspense occasioned by his sudden disappearance, as may be imagined,
added a new element of wretchedness to the situation at Maxfield.
Telegrams, letters, inquiries, alike failed to discover his whereabouts
or the secre