[Illustration:  She sat up in bed suddenly.]

She colored a little, and smiled at that, but the next moment she was sitting forward, tense and questioning again.

“If that is true, Mrs. Pitman,” she said, “who was the veiled woman he met that Monday morning at daylight, and took across the bridge to Pittsburgh?  I believe it was Jennie Brice.  If it was not, who was it?”

“I don’t believe he took any woman across the bridge at that hour.  Who says he did?”

“Uncle Jim saw him.  He had been playing cards all night at one of the clubs, and was walking home.  He says he met Mr. Howell face to face, and spoke to him.  The woman was tall and veiled.  Uncle Jim sent for him, a day or two later, and he refused to explain.  Then they forbade him the house.  Mama objected to him, anyhow, and he only came on sufferance.  He is a college man of good family, but without any money at all save what he earns..  And now—­”

I had had some young newspaper men with me, and I knew what they got.  They were nice boys, but they made fifteen dollars a week.  I’m afraid I smiled a little as I looked around the room, with its gray grass-cloth walls, its toilet-table spread with ivory and gold, and the maid in attendance in her black dress and white apron, collar and cuffs.  Even the little nightgown Lida was wearing would have taken a week’s salary or more.  She saw my smile.

“It was to be his chance,” she said.  “If he made good, he was to have something better.  My Uncle Jim owns the paper, and he promised me to help him.  But—­”

So Jim was running a newspaper!  That was a curious career for Jim to choose.  Jim, who was twice expelled from school, and who could never write a letter without a dictionary beside him!  I had a pang when I heard his name again, after all the years.  For I had written to Jim from Oklahoma, after Mr. Pitman died, asking for money to bury him, and had never even had a reply.

“And you haven’t seen him since?”

“Once.  I—­didn’t hear from him, and I called him up.  We—­we met in the park.  He said everything was all right, but he couldn’t tell me just then.  The next day he resigned from the paper and went away.  Mrs. Pitman, it’s driving me crazy!  For they have found a body, and they think it is hers.  If it is, and he was with her—­”

“Don’t be a foolish girl,” I protested.  “If he was with Jennie Brice, she is still living, and if he was not with Jennie Brice—­”

“If it was not Jennie Brice, then I have a right to know who it was,” she declared.  “He was not like himself when I met him.  He said such queer things:  he talked about an onyx clock, and said he had been made a fool of, and that no matter what came out, I was always to remember that he had done what he did for the best, and that—­that he cared for me more than for anything in this world or the next.”

“That wasn’t so foolish!” I couldn’t help it; I leaned over and drew her nightgown up over her bare white shoulder.  “You won’t help anything or anybody by taking cold, my dear,” I said.  “Call your maid and have her put a dressing-gown around you.”