to her hand, saying clearly:

"Thank you, my girl, there's for your trouble."

Jane-Ellen just glanced at it, and then crumpling it into a ball she
threw it across the hall. Willoughby, who like many other sheltered
creatures retained his playfulness late in life, bounded after it,
caught it up in his paws, threw it about, and finally set on it with his
sharp little teeth and bit it to pieces. But neither Tucker nor the cook
waited to see the end. He got into the car and rolled away, and she went
back to the kitchen.

Crane glanced at Lefferts, to whom plainly his duty as host pointed, and
then he hurried down the kitchen stairs, closing the door carefully
behind him.

XIII

JANE-ELLEN was shaking out her last dishcloth, her head turned well over
her shoulder to avoid the shower of spray that came from it. He seated
himself on the kitchen-table, and watched her for some time in silence.

"And is that the way you treat all presents, Jane-Ellen," he asked,
"throwing them to Willoughby to tear to pieces?"

"That was not a present, sir. Presents are between equals, I've always
thought."

"Then, Jane-Ellen, I don't see how you can ever hope to get any."

She looked at him and smiled. "Your talk is too deep and clever for a
poor girl like me to understand, sir."

He smiled back. "They've all gone, Jane-Ellen," he said.

The news did not seem to disturb the cook in the least. Reed would have
been shocked by the calmness with which she received it.

[Illustration: "And there was no truth in it?"]

"And now you're all alone, sir," she replied.

"Absolutely alone."

She was still pattering about the kitchen, putting the last things to
rights, but--or so it seemed to Crane--a little busier than her
occupation warranted.

"They left early, sir, didn't they? But then it did not seem to me that
they were really enjoying themselves, not even Mr. Lefferts, though he
is such an amusing gentleman. Every one seemed sad, sir, except you."

"I was sad, too, Jane-Ellen."

"Indeed, sir?"

"Something was said at dinner that distressed me deeply."

"By whom, sir?"

"By you."

She did not stop her work nor seem very much surprised, but of course
she asked what her unfortunate speech had been.

"I was sorry to hear you say you believed in Miss Revelly's triple
engagement."

At this she did stop short, and immediately in his vicinity. "But I did
not know you knew Miss Revell