you loved me once."

"Possibly," coolly. "But last year's loves are as tedious reading as last
year's newspapers. Better trust my good-nature. You show your shrewdness in
that. I don't interfere with people. The world uses me very well. It's a
hogshead that gives the best of wine--if you know how to tap it."

"You've tapped it with a will. You go through life perpetually drunk," he
thought as she ran lightly before him up the steps. He habitually made such
complacent moral reflections upon his companions to himself, and took
spiritual comfort in them.

The hall was wide and sunny, made homelike by low seats and growing plants:
it was occupied by half a dozen committee-men, who were waiting impatiently
to see Mr. Van Ness. The princess seated herself, attentive, her head on
one side like some bright-eyed tropical bird.

Van Ness, without even a glance toward her, took up his business of
Christian financier. "Do not go, I beg," as the captain opened the inner
door for Rhodes and the ladies to retire. "Our affairs are conducted in the
eyes of the public. Sound integrity has no secrets to keep. That is our
pride.--Ah, gentlemen?"

The captain was glad to stay. Surely, Jane would be impressed with the vast
influence of this good man. Van Ness did not look at her once. But he saw
nobody but her, and spoke directly to her ear.

Asylums, workingmen's homes, hospitals, in all of which he was a director,
were brought up and dismissed with a few hopeful, earnest words. The vast
system of organized charities through which the kindly wealthy class touch
the poor beneath them was opened. Mrs. Wilde, a manager in many of them,
joined in the discussion.

"What a useless creature I am!" thought Jane. "But the money," doggedly,
"is mine, and I choose to give it to father if the whole world go hungry."
She turned, however, from one representative of these asylums to the other
with a baited look. Was it this one or that whom she had robbed?

"Now, as to Temperance City--_our_ city?" demanded a puffy little man
importantly. "You are the fountain-head of information there. We look to
you, Mr. Van Ness."

"You shall have the annual report next week.--Temperance City," turning to
Rhodes, his balmy gaze aimed straight over her head, "is a scheme to
protect people of small means in the churches, especially women, from
wrecking their little all in unwise investments. It is a town on the line
of the Pacific Railroad. Lots are only sold to