ng to bear on these classes."

"I don't know anything about machinery or classes. Twiss and Betty were
friends of mine, and I tried to help them, and have failed."

Miss Fleming, who was watching her furtively, saw her dull eyes raised
presently and rest on the captain, who with a red face and bursts of
laughter was telling one of his interminable stories.

"This girl," Cornelia said to herself, "has everything which I have
not--beauty, wealth, Bruce Neckart's love. Yet she looks at that weak old
man as if he were all that was left her in the world." She had put Jane
before on the general basis of antipathy which she had to everything in the
world that was not masculine, but the feeling had kindled since last night
into active dislike.

When breakfast was over and their guests had gone to their rooms to make
ready to meet the train, Jane decoyed the captain away to Bruno's kennel,
where he was tied during Mr. Van Ness's stay. Once out of sight she retied
his cravat, arranged his white hair to her liking, stroked his sunken
cheeks. Here was something actual and real. She knew now that she had never
had anything that was truly her own but the kind foolish face looking down
on her. She never would have anything more. Only an hour ago life had
opened for her wide and fair as the dawn: now it had narrowed to this old
hand in hers, to his breath, that came and went--O God, how feebly!

"You are looking stronger to-day, father. You are gaining every day. Oh
that is quite certain! Very soon we shall have you as well and strong as
you were at forty."

What if she had not had money this last year? He never could have lived
through it. God had been kind to her--kind! She pressed his hand to her
breast with a quick glance out to the bright sky. The Captain saw her chin
quivering. His own thoughts ran partly in the same line as hers.

"Oh, I'm gaining, no doubt of it. Though I never could have pulled through
this year if we had had to live in the old way. God bless Will Laidley for
leaving the money as he did!"

"It was not his to leave otherwise!" she cried indignantly.

"Tut, tut, Jane! Of course it was his. By every law. He could have flung it
away where he chose; and he had a perfect right to do it."

It was not God who had been kind to her, then: it was only that she had
stolen the money?

"Come, Jenny: we must go back to the house."

"In a moment, father. Go on: I will follow you."

She walked up and down the tan