ruce Neckart represented to her
Strength itself, and he submitted to these rules cheerfully. He was happy
to think of her as the wife of a good, presentable man!

When she had thought of him as going alone with his terrible burden away
from her into the wilderness, true to her until the last breath of reason
was gone, there had been a thrill of delight in the intolerable pain. But
planning, like finical little Waring, that she should fall snugly into a
fashionable set, Parisian gowns, a suitable marriage!

Jane had not the womanish faculty of thinning every fact or thought that
came to her into tears or talk. Neckart had gone out of her life. She
accepted the fact at once, without argument. What the loss imported to her
would assuredly be known only to her own narrow, one-sided mind, and the
God who had given it to her.

"Shall we go to the house, father? Can't you laugh again, and look like
yourself? Why, I will give myself up, body and soul, to Society or
Philanthropy--anything you choose--rather than see you so shaken." She hung
on his arm as they went up the path, talking incessantly, and laughing
more, as even the captain felt, than the jokes would warrant. The moment
was favorable for introducing the subject he had at heart.

"The last train brought out a dozen men to consult Mr. Van Ness," he
began--"deputations from church and charitable organizations. 'Pon my soul,
I don't know what Christianity in this country would do without that man!"

"It would wear a very different face," absently.

"I went with Rhodes to a great revival-meeting in town one night lately,
and Van Ness, of course, was called up on the platform. Rhodes thought he
looked like one of the apostles in modern dress; and all the ladies near me
said that his face beamed with heavenly light. It would have made anybody
devout to look at him. Are you listening?" glancing at her abstracted face.
"You certainly think him remarkably handsome? As to his nose, now?"

"I don't suppose anybody could find fault with his nose," smiling.

"Nor with his manner?"

"Nor with his manner."

"And yet you are not friends, eh?" holding his breath for her answer.

"No," carelessly. "Mr. Van Ness and I could not be friends."

"Why? why?"

"How could I tell?" with a shrug, and looking at Bruno, who was fighting a
cat just then without cause.

The captain looked and sighed. It was of no use, he thought, to try to
account for the prejudices or likings of any