“Do you believe her story?” Stella asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered.  “I know that I am being followed about, and if she could get into my rooms, it is quite as easy for them to do so.  They may have been there, and I dare say that if I had entered unsuspectingly, and Dan Prince had anything to do with it, I shouldn’t have had much chance.  It amused me to see all my drawers turned out and my papers disturbed.”

“Little idiot!” Stella said impatiently.  “She ought to be at home, feeding her father’s chickens.  She is hopelessly out of place here, just as she was in New York,”

“I wish we could send her back there,” Vine declared.

Stella looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“My dear Norris,” she said, “isn’t this rather a new departure for you?  I don’t seem to recognize you in this frame of mind.”

He sipped his wine thoughtfully for a minute or two, and helped himself to some curry.

“I believe after all, Stella,” he said, “that you know very little about me.  I am naturally a most tender-hearted person.”

“You have managed,” she remarked drily, “to conceal your weakness most effectively.”

“A journalist,” he reminded her, “is used to conceal them.  Without the arts of lying and acting, we might as well abandon our profession.  Seriously, Stella, I am sorry for the child.  I wish you could find her and pack her off home.”

Stella shrugged her shoulders.

“In the first place,” she said, “I have no idea where to look; and in the second, she is one of those obstinate children who never do what they are told, or see reason.”

“I admit,” he replied, “that finding her is rather a difficulty, but after all, you see, it is you directly, and I indirectly, who are responsible for her troubles.  I think we ought to do what we can.  I wish I hadn’t let her go the other night.”

“I am becoming,” Stella said, smiling, “a little jealous of my cousin.”

He looked at her with steady scrutiny, as though he were curious to decide how much of truth there might be in her words.

“You have no need, my dear Stella,” he said, “to be jealous of Virginia or any other girl.  This is simply the dying kick of a nearly finished conscience.”

“If I come across her,” Stella said, “I will do what I can.  If you see her again, and I should think you are the more likely, find out her address and I will go and see her.  By the by,” she added, leaning across the table towards him, “you seem very confident of preserving it.  Tell me, where do you keep that paper?”

He smiled.

“Ah!” he said.  “All my secrets save one are yours, but I think that that one I will not tell you.”

She frowned at him, obviously annoyed.

“Do you mean that?” she asked.  “Surely you do not hesitate to trust me?”

“Not for one moment,” he answered.  “On the other hand, the knowledge of a thing of that sort is better in as few hands as possible.  You will be none the better for knowing.  Circumstances might arise to make even the knowledge an embarrassment to you.  Take my advice, and do not ask me that question.”