inquiry, then dropped around to his
cousin's home for a few minutes, where he allowed her to tell all she
knew about the Stanhope wedding they had attended together, and the
different theories concerning the escaped bride. Quite casually he asked
if she knew whether the bride had property of her own, if so who were
her guardians. His cousin thought she knew a lot, but, sifting it down,
he discovered that it was nearly all hearsay or surmise.

When he reached Jane Carson's boarding house he found that young woman
ensconced in a tiny room, nine by twelve, a faded ingrain carpet on the
floor, a depressed looking bed lounge against the bleary wall-paper,
beneath crayon portraits of the landlady's dead husband and sons. There
was a rocking-chair, a trunk, a cane-seat chair, and an oil stove turned
up to smoking point in honor of the caller, but there was little room
left for the caller. On the top of the trunk reposed a large pasteboard
box securely tied.

Jane, after a shy greeting, untied the strings and opened the cover,
having first carefully slipped the bolt of the door.

"You can't be too careful," she said. "You never can tell."

Reyburn stood beside her and looked in a kind of awe at the glistening
white, recognized the thick texture of the satin, the rare quality of
the rose-point lace with which it was adorned, caught the faint
fragrance of faded orange blossoms wafting from the filmy mist of the
veil as Jane lifted it tenderly; then leaned over and touched a finger
to the pile of whiteness, reverently, as though he were paying a tribute
at a lovely shrine.

Jane even unwrapped the little slippers, one at a time, and folded them
away again, and they said no word until it was all tied back in its
papers, Reyburn assisting with the strings.

"Now, ef you don't mind waitin' a minute I guess it would be safer to
put it away now," she said as she slipped the bolt and ran upstairs.

She was back in a minute and sat down opposite to him, drawing out from
the neck of her blouse a ribbon with a heavy glittering circlet at its
end.

"Here's the ring." She laid it in his palm. He took it, wondering, a
kind of awe still upon him that he should be thus handling the intimate
belongings of that little unknown bride whom he had seen lying
unconscious in a strange church a few short months before. How strange
that all this should have come to him when many wiser, more nearly
related, were trying their best to get some clu