ften for
visits to even such an Arcadia as this. No stock market or political news
in Arcadia, eh?" with a benevolent gurgle of a laugh. "Business! business!
Miss Swendon. Ah, how it engrosses the majority of men!" shaking his head
ponderously.

She said nothing. It was as if she had been suddenly wakened out of a dream
in the crowd of a dusty market-place. He had gone back to the world, to his
real business and his real trouble. She, with her love and her intended
cure for him, was a silly fool wandering in a fantastic Arcadia.

Miss Fleming was walking up and down on the porch as they came up, more
carefully dressed than usual. The captain had just told her that Neckart
had gone.

"Ah? I'm very sorry," carelessly. "I should have been glad to see him
again. Though no doubt he has forgotten me."

She went forward to meet Jane with a smile, but a withered gray look under
her eyes. "I have been making a tour of your principality," she said as
they went in to breakfast. "I see you have brought out a colony of
Philadelphia paupers. Twiss, and Betty, and the rest."

"They were not paupers," said Jane, taking her place behind the urn. "Did
you see into what a great boy Top has grown? And Peter?" It gave her a warm
glow at heart to remember these people just now. At least, there her care
had not been fantastic or thrown away.

"I hardly expected you to take up the role of guardian angel. It requires
study, after all, to play it successfully," pursued Cornelia with an
amiable smile, cutting her butter viciously.--"Very young girls are apt to
be impetuous in their charities, and damage more than they help," turning
to the judge. "These poor people, for instance. Betty had her kinsfolk
about her in Philadelphia, her church and her gossips. She complained
bitterly to me this morning that she 'had no company here but the cows:
Miss Swendon might as well have whisked her off into a haythen desart.'"

"She complained to you!" cried the captain. "Why, the trouble and money
which Jane has given to that woman and her family! They were starving, I
assure you!"

Jane listened at first with her usual quiet good-humor. Miss Fleming's
waspish temper generally amused her, as it would have done a man (if he was
not her husband). But she began to grow anxious.

"You really think Betty is not contented here?" her hand a little unsteady
as she poured the cream into the cups.

"Contented? She seems miserable enough. Home is home, you kn