d
then a boarder to eke out a living for them all, she had sought and
found, through a summer visitor who had taught her Sunday school class
for a few weeks, a good position in this big Eastern city. She had made
good and been promoted until her wages not only kept herself with strict
economy, but justified her in looking forward to the time when she might
send for her next younger sister. Her deft fingers kept her meagre
wardrobe in neatness--and a tolerable deference to fashion, so that she
had been able to annex the "gentleman friend" and take a little outing
with him now and then at a moving picture theatre or a Sunday evening
service. She had met and vanquished the devil on more than one
battlefield in the course of her experience with different department
heads; and she was wise beyond her years in the ways of the world. But
this situation was different. Here was a girl who had been brought up
"by hand," as she would have said with a sneer a few hours before, and
she would have despised her for it. She raised up on one elbow and
leaned over once more to watch the delicate profile of this gentle
maiden, in the dim fitful light of the city night that came through the
one little window. There had been something appealing in the beauty and
frankness of the girl bride, something appalling in the situation she
had found herself in. Jane Carson didn't know whether she was doing
right or not to help this stray bride. It made her catch her breath to
think how she might be bringing all the power of the law and of money
upon her reckless young head, but she meant to do it, just the same.

Elizabeth Stanhope! What a beautiful name! It fitted right in with all
the romance Jane had ever dreamed. If she only could write scenarios,
what a thriller this would make!

Then she lay down and fell to planning.

CHAPTER V

THE morning dawned, and still no word from the missing bride. But the
brief guarded sentences which Herbert Hutton had telephoned to the
newspapers had been somehow sidetracked, and in their place a ghastly
story had leaked out which some poor, hard-pressed reporter had gleaned
from the gossip in the church and hurried off to put into type before
there was time for it to be denied. Hot foot the story had run, and
great headlines proclaimed the escape of Betty even while the family
were carefully paving the way for the report of a protracted illness and
absence, if need be, till they could find trace of her