hat is, one of them had
said:

"That's Violet Strange. She will never be the beauty her sister was; but
perhaps that's not to be deplored. Theresa made a great mess of it."

"That's true. I hear that she and the Signor have been seen lately here
in town. In poverty, of course. He hadn't even as much go in him as the
ordinary singing-master."

I suppose I should have hurried away, and left this barbed arrow to
rankle where it fell. But I could not. I had never learned a word of
Theresa's fate and that word poverty, proving that she was alive and
suffering, held me to my place to hear what more they might say of
her who for years had been for me an indistinct figure bathed in cruel
moonlight.

"I have never approved of Peter Strange's conduct at that time," one of
the voices now went on. "He didn't handle her right. She had a lovely
disposition and would have listened to him had he been more gentle with
her. But it isn't in him. I hope this one--"

I didn't hear the end of that. I had no interest in anything they might
say about myself. It was of her I wanted to hear, of her. Weren't they
going to say anything more about my poor sister? Yes; it was a topic
which interested both and presently I heard:

"He'll never do anything for her, no matter what happens; I've heard him
say so. And Laura has vowed the same." (Laura is our aunt.) "Besides,
Theresa has a pride of her own quite equal to her father's. She wouldn't
take anything from him now. She'd rather struggle on. I'm told--I don't
know how true it is--that she's working in a department store; one of
the Sixth Avenue ones. Oh, there's Mrs. Vandegraff! Don't you want to
speak to her?"

They moved off, leaving me still gazing with unseeing eyes at the
picture before which I stood planted, and saying over and over in
monotonous iteration, "One of the department stores in Sixth Avenue! One
of the department stores in Sixth Avenue!"

Which department store?

I meant to find out.

I do not know whether up till then I had had the least consciousness of
possessing what is called the detective instinct. But, at the prospect
of this quest, so much like that of the proverbial needle in a haystack,
as I did not even know my sister's married name and something within me
forbade my asking it, I experienced an odd sense of elation followed
by a certainty of success which in five minutes changed me from an
irresponsible girl to a woman with a deliberate purpose in life.