news from
California. Had nothing ever been heard of the missing jewels? she
asked. Their need was so great. She had most excellent prospects of an
engagement in Boston if she could only have six months instruction under
Signor Calabresi, but his terms were so high and she would have to live
in New York, and people kept writing her that she and Naomi really ought
to make some effort to recover the value of that property, and she had
come, friendless as she was, to ask if he thought a suit against the
steamship company would result in their getting anything. Captain Pet--a
gentleman, that is, who had been most kind in San Francisco, had
promised to do something, but now that the General was dead what could
he do? There was no doubting the identity or intentions of that
gentleman, thought Loring as he gravely replied that they would only be
defeated in any such attempt. Then with swimming eyes she had bemoaned
her past, her fatal errors, her greed for wealth and position that had
led her to stifle her own heart throbs and deceive the one true friend
she had ever known, and Loring broke short the conversation by leaving
the room. Then she came again, alone, and he refused to see her. Then
she came with Mrs. Burton, and the house was in a titter, and he broke
up his establishment and moved back to the hotel, to the scandal of his
landlord, as has been said, who made loud complaint to the powers at
headquarters. Then she wrote that she was being followed and persecuted
by a man she never knew before, the man who was with her the night Mr.
Lambert said they met them in front of Mrs. Burton's, a dreadful man who
said that he believed that she loved Lieutenant Loring and made threats
against him. She implored Loring's protection, and Loring saw through
the flimsy device and returned the letter unanswered, and later letters
unopened, and then the woman seemed to take fire, and in turn she
threatened him.

And now she had brought Mrs. Burton to witness his cruelty to her, the
meek, suffering girl to whom he was pledged and plighted, who she had
followed to Omaha in hopes of softening his heart and winning back his
wayward love, as was the burden of her sorrowing song to that most
sympathetic of women, already burning with prejudice and fancied wrong
of her own. One "woman scorned" is more than enough for many a
reputation. Two, in double harness, would wreck that of Saint Anthony.

All this and more had sped through Loring's mi