“What do you want?”

“I want you to find Mary Dane, and bring her here, educate her, dress her, treat as your own child.”

“Where shall I find her?”

“At K——­, twenty miles from here.”

“Who is she?  What is she?”

“An actress, traveling about with a strolling troupe; an actress since her sixth year—­on the stage eleven years to-night.  This is her seventeenth birthday, as you know.”

“Is this all?”

“All at present.  Are you prepared to obey, or shall I—­”

“There!” interrupted Mr. Walraven, “that will do.  There is no need of threats, Miriam—­I am very willing to obey you in this.  If I had known Mary Dane—­why the deuce did you give her that name?—­was on this continent, I would have hunted her up of my own accord.  I would, upon my honor!”

“Swear by something you possess,” the woman said, with a sneer; “honor you never had since I first knew you.”

“Come, come, Miriam,” said Mr. Walraven, uneasily, “don’t be cantankerous.  Let by-gones be by-gones.  I’m sorry for the past—­I am indeed, and am willing to do well for the future.  Sit down and be sociable, and tell me all about it.  How came you to let the little one go on the stage first?”

Miriam spurned away the proffered chair.

“I spurn it as I would your dead body if it lay before me, Carl Walraven!  Sit down with you?  Never, if my life depended on it!  The child became an actress because I could keep her no longer—­I couldn’t keep myself—­and because she had the voice and face of an angel—­poor little wretch!  The manager of a band of strolling players, passing through our village, heard her baby voice singing some baby song, and pounced upon her on the instant.  We struck a bargain, and I sold her, Mr. Walraven—­yes, sold her.”

“You wretch!  Well?”

“Well, I went to see her occasionally afterward, but not often, for the strolling troupe were here, there, and everywhere—­from pillar to post.  But I never lost sight of her, and I saw her grow up a pretty, slender, bright-eyed lass, well dressed, well fed, and happy—­perfectly happy in her wandering life.  Her great-grandmother—­old Peter Dane’s wife—­was a gypsy, Mr. Walraven, and I dare say the wild blood broke out.  She liked the life, and became the star of the little band—­the queen of the troupe.  I kept her in view even when she crossed the Atlantic last year, and paid her a visit a week ago to-night.”

“Humph!” was Carl Walraven’s comment.  “Well, Mistress Miriam, it might have been worse; no thanks to you, though.  And now—­what does she know of her own story?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“Nothing, I tell you.  Her name is Mary Dane, and she is seventeen years old on the twenty-fifth of November.  Her father and mother are dead—­poor but honest people, of course—­and I am Aunt Miriam, earning a respectable living by washing clothes and scrubbing floors.  That is what she knows.  How much of that is true, Mr. Walraven?”