“Not return?” stopping in her slow walk.

“No.  It really must be impossible for an editor to spare time often for visits to even such an Arcadia as this.  No stock market or political news in Arcadia, eh?” with a benevolent gurgle of a laugh.  “Business! business!  Miss Swendon.  Ah, how it engrosses the majority of men!” shaking his head ponderously.

She said nothing.  It was as if she had been suddenly wakened out of a dream in the crowd of a dusty market-place.  He had gone back to the world, to his real business and his real trouble.  She, with her love and her intended cure for him, was a silly fool wandering in a fantastic Arcadia.

Miss Fleming was walking up and down on the porch as they came up, more carefully dressed than usual.  The captain had just told her that Neckart had gone.

“Ah?  I’m very sorry,” carelessly.  “I should have been glad to see him again.  Though no doubt he has forgotten me.”

She went forward to meet Jane with a smile, but a withered gray look under her eyes.  “I have been making a tour of your principality,” she said as they went in to breakfast.  “I see you have brought out a colony of Philadelphia paupers.  Twiss, and Betty, and the rest.”

“They were not paupers,” said Jane, taking her place behind the urn.  “Did you see into what a great boy Top has grown?  And Peter?” It gave her a warm glow at heart to remember these people just now.  At least, there her care had not been fantastic or thrown away.

“I hardly expected you to take up the role of guardian angel.  It requires study, after all, to play it successfully,” pursued Cornelia with an amiable smile, cutting her butter viciously.—­“Very young girls are apt to be impetuous in their charities, and damage more than they help,” turning to the judge.  “These poor people, for instance.  Betty had her kinsfolk about her in Philadelphia, her church and her gossips.  She complained bitterly to me this morning that she ’had no company here but the cows:  Miss Swendon might as well have whisked her off into a haythen desart.’”

“She complained to you!” cried the captain.  “Why, the trouble and money which Jane has given to that woman and her family!  They were starving, I assure you!”

Jane listened at first with her usual quiet good-humor.  Miss Fleming’s waspish temper generally amused her, as it would have done a man (if he was not her husband).  But she began to grow anxious.

“You really think Betty is not contented here?” her hand a little unsteady as she poured the cream into the cups.

“Contented?  She seems miserable enough.  Home is home, you know, if it is only a cellar and starvation.  But perhaps”—­with a shrug—­“that class of Irish are never happy without a grievance.  Now, Twiss, it appears to me, has just ground for complaint.—­A shoemaker,” turning to the judge a face beaming with fun, “whom this young lady has transported and set down in charge of gardens and hot-houses.  He does not know a hoe from a mower, and he is too old to learn.  He had a good trade:  now he has nothing.”