again? Will she come, Jack? Perhaps she has been here already; perhaps,"
she had risen with tremulous excitement, and was glancing at the
door,--"perhaps she is here now. Why don't you speak, Jack? Tell me
all."

The keen eyes that looked down into hers were glistening with an
infinite tenderness that none, perhaps, but she would have deemed them
capable of. "Clara," he said gently and cheerily, "try and compose
yourself. You are trembling now with the fatigue and excitement of your
journey. I have seen Carry: she is well and beautiful. Let that suffice
you now."

His gentle firmness composed and calmed her now, as it had often done
before. Stroking her thin hand, he said, after a pause, "Did Carry ever
write to you?"

"Twice, thanking me for some presents. They were only school-girl
letters," she added, nervously answering the interrogation of his eyes.

"Did she ever know of your own troubles? of your poverty, of the
sacrifices you made to pay her bills, of your pawning your clothes and
jewels, of your"--

"No, no!" interrupted the woman quickly: "no! How could she? I have no
enemy cruel enough to tell her that."

"But if she--or if Mrs. Tretherick--had heard of it? If Carry thought
you were poor, and unable to support her properly, it might influence
her decision. Young girls are fond of the position that wealth can give.
She may have rich friends, maybe a lover."

Mrs. Starbottle winced at the last sentence. "But," she said eagerly,
grasping Jack's hand, "when you found me sick and helpless at
Sacramento, when you--God bless you for it, Jack!--offered to help me to
the East, you said you knew of something, you had some plan, that would
make me and Carry independent."

"Yes," said Jack hastily; "but I want you to get strong and well first.
And, now that you are calmer, you shall listen to my visit to the
school."

It was then that Mr. Jack Prince proceeded to describe the interview
already recorded, with a singular felicity and discretion that shames
my own account of that proceeding. Without suppressing a single fact,
without omitting a word or detail, he yet managed to throw a poetic veil
over that prosaic episode, to invest the heroine with a romantic roseate
atmosphere, which, though not perhaps entirely imaginary, still, I fear,
exhibited that genius which ten years ago had made the columns of "The
Fiddletown Avalanche" at once fascinating and instructive. It was not
until he saw the heightening co