and, dismissing Madame
Fontaine from further attendance on him. Secretly, he was as eager as
ever to show the keys. But the inordinate vanity which was still the mad
side of him and the incurable side of him, shrank from opening the
leather bag unless the widow first made a special request and a special
favor of it. Feeling no sort of interest in the subject, she took the
shorter way of making her peace with him. She took out her purse.

"Let me make you a present of the gloves," she said, with her
irresistible smile.

Jack lost all his dignity in an instant.

He leapt off the window seat and snatched at the money, like a famished
animal snatching at a piece of meat. Mrs. Wagner caught him by the arm,
and looked at him. He lifted his eyes to hers, then lowered them again as
if he was ashamed of himself.

"Oh, to be sure!" he said, "I have forgotten my manners, I haven't said
Thank you. A lapse of memory, I suppose. Thank you, Mrs. Housekeeper." In
a moment more, he and his bag were on their way to the fashionable
quarter of the town.

"You will make allowances for my poor little Jack, I am sure," said Mrs.
Wagner.

"My dear madam, Jack amuses me!"

Mrs. Wagner winced a little at the tone of the widow's reply. "I have
cured him of all the worst results of his cruel imprisonment in the
mad-house," she went on. "But his harmless vanity seems to be inbred; I
can do nothing with him on that side of his character. He is proud of
being trusted with anything, especially with keys; and he has been kept
waiting for them, while I had far more important matters to occupy me. In
a day or two he will be more accustomed to his great responsibility, as
he calls it."

"Of course you don't trust him," said Madame Fontaine, "with keys that
are of any importance; like the key of your desk there, for instance."

Mrs. Wagner's steady gray eyes began to brighten. "I can trust him with
anything," she answered emphatically.

Madame Fontaine arched her handsome brows in a mutely polite expression
of extreme surprise.

"In my experience of the world," Mrs. Wagner went on, "I have found that
the rarest of all human virtues is the virtue of gratitude. In a hundred
little ways my poor friendless Jack has shown me that he is grateful. To
my mind that is reason enough for trusting him."

"With money?" the widow inquired.

"Certainly. In London I trusted him with money--with the happiest
results. I quieted his mind by an appeal to his