in life; but Mr.
Potter lost everything of his own and of mine too, in some wild
speculation about which the people in that part of Indiana went mad. The
crash came a year ago, and the Misses Jennings, who kept the school,
asked me to stay on as an under teacher--they were sorry for me, and so
kind. But even if nothing had happened, I should have left then, for I
felt old enough to set about my real work. Oh, I see you think I might
have got at my sister before, somehow, but I couldn't, indeed. I tried
everything. Not only did I write and write, but I begged the Misses
Jennings to help, and the minister of the church where we went on
Sundays. The Misses Jennings told the girls' parents and relations
whenever they came to visit, and they all promised, if they ever went to
Algiers, they would look for my sister's husband, Captain Cassim ben
Halim, of the Spahis. But they weren't the sort of people who ever do go
such journeys. And the minister wrote to the American Consul in Algiers
for me, but the only answer was that Cassim ben Halim had disappeared.
It seemed not even to be known that he had an American wife."

"Your stepmother ought to have gone herself," said Stephen.

"Oh--_ought_! I very seldom saw my stepmother after she married Mr.
Potter. Though she lived so near, she never asked me to her house, and
only came to call at the school once or twice a year, for form's sake.
But I ran away one evening and begged her to go and find Saidee. She
said it was nonsense; that if Saidee hadn't wanted to drop us, she would
have kept on writing, or else she was dead. But don't you think I should
have _known_ if Saidee were dead?"

"By instinct, you mean--telepathy, or something of that sort?"

"I don't know what I mean, but _I should have known_. I should have felt
her death, like a string snapping in my heart. Instead, I heard her
calling to me--I hear her always. She wants me. She needs me. I know it,
and nothing could make me believe otherwise. So now you understand how,
if anything were to be done, I had to do it myself. When I was quite
little, I thought by the time I should be sixteen or seventeen, and
allowed to leave school--or old enough to run away if necessary--I'd
have a little money of my own. But when my stepmother died I felt sure I
should never, never get anything from Mr. Potter."

"But that old friend you spoke of, who wanted to upset the will?
Couldn't he have done anything?" Stephen asked.

"If he ha