d it pleases him."

Jack looked down. After a pause he lifted his lashes towards her
draggled skirt, and said in an easier, conversational tone, "Yes! I
thought I knew that dress. I gave it to you for that walking scene in
'High Life,' didn't I?"

"No," she said quickly, "it was the blue one with silver
trimming,--don't you remember? I tried to turn it the first year I was
married, but it never looked the same."

"It was sweetly pretty," said Jack encouragingly, "and with that blue
hat lined with silver, it was just fetching! Somehow I don't quite
remember this one," and he looked at it critically.

"I had it at the races in '58, and that supper Judge Boompointer gave us
at 'Frisco where Colonel Fish upset the table trying to get at Jim. Do
you know," she said, with a little laugh, "it's got the stains of the
champagne on it yet; it never would come off. See!" and she held the
candle with great animation to the breadth of silk before her.

"And there's more of it on the sleeve," said Jack; "isn't there?"

Mrs. Rylands looked reproachfully at Jack.

"That isn't champagne; don't you know what it is?"

"No!"

"It's blood," she said gravely; "when that Mexican cut poor Ned so
bad,--don't you remember? I held his head upon my arm while you bandaged
him." She heaved a little sigh, and then added, with a faint laugh,
"That's the worst thing about the clothes of a girl in the profession,
they get spoiled or stained before they wear out."

This large truth did not seem to impress Mr. Hamlin. "Why did you leave
Santa Clara?" he said abruptly, in his previous critical tone.

"Because of the folks there. They were standoffish and ugly. You see,
Josh"--

"Who?"

"Josh Rylands!--HIM! He told everybody who I was, even those who had
never seen me in the bills,--how good I was to marry him, how he had
faith in me and wasn't ashamed,--until they didn't believe we were
married at all. So they looked another way when they met us, and didn't
call. And all the while I was glad they didn't, but he wouldn't believe
it, and allowed I was pining on account of it."

"And were you?"

"I swear to God, Jack, I'd have been content, and more, to have been
just there with him, seein' nobody, letting every one believe I was dead
and gone, but he said it was wrong, and weak! Maybe it was," she added,
with a shy, interrogating look at Jack, of which, however, he took no
notice. "Then when he found they wouldn't call, what do you think h