vior. He
would help her to save him.... She could do it yet--if only she did
not learn the truth and turn from him. If ever she had been able to
make Jack go to a masquerade--that cursed masquerade!--she could
work other, more beneficent, miracles.

So now he asked, very cautiously, his mind on divided paths, "Do you
say there was nothing to draw suspicion--he did not talk to any
one, the guests or the bride--?"

"Oh, yes, he did talk to the bride," said Miss Jeffries with such
utter unconsciousness that McLean's heart hardened against the
renegade.

"He talked quite a while to her," she said.

"Did you notice anything--?"

"Oh, I couldn't hear what was said. He was the last in line and he
stayed for some time. He said afterward that it was all right. She
was very nice to him," said Jinny earnestly, producing every scrap
of incident for McLean's judgment. "She showed him some of her
presents--something about her neck."

In mid-speech McLean changed a startled "God!" to "Good!"

"She wasn't suspicious, then?" he said weakly.

"Not as far as I could see. Oh, nothing _seemed_ to be wrong. But I
did feel uneasy until I got away and then, Jack hasn't come back--"

Again she looked at the young Scotchman for confirmation of her fear
and again she saw that careful expressionless calm.

"It's no need for alarm," he told her slowly, "since nothing went
wrong. I see no reason why Jack couldn't have walked out of that
reception. If we only knew where he was going later--"

"Yes, something might have happened later," Jinny took up. "I
thought of that. He might have wanted some more fun and felt more
reckless--Oh, I _am_ worried," she confessed, her gray eyes very
round and childlike.

And if anything had happened she would always blame herself, thought
McLean ironically.... The unthinking deviltry of the young
scoundrel!... When he found him he'd have a few things to say!

"That's why I came to you," Jinny went on. "I hesitated, for he had
warned me so against telling any one, but no one else knows--"

"And no one must know," McLean assured her crisply. "I daresay it's
a mare's nest and Jack will be found safe and sound at his diggings
or off on a lark with some friend or other, but it's well to make
sure and you did quite right in coming to me."

Jinny thought she had done quite right, too.

There was a satisfying strength about McLean. She resented a trifle
his masculine way of trying to keep the dark side fr