Sybil, entering by the opposite door, saw a thin, elderly woman, whose dark hair sprinkled with gray and banded smoothly down over each ear, whose small, dark eyes, whose thin, pale-lipped, closely closed mouth, and long, drooping nose spelled as plainly as letters could the word--discreet. Her black gown and unspeakably respectable bonnet, her thick but plain cloak, her neat cashmere gloves, were all prim adjuncts to that picture of _discretion_. She stood in true servant-like attitude, eyes down and hands crossed at the exact waist-line; and as Sybil reached her god-mother's side that lady, raising her glasses to look at the stranger, said: "Mrs. Stivers, I wish to--why! why! you're Martin--you are surely Jane Martin?" and sat staring. "Yes, Madam Van Camp," she replied, "I am Jane that was in your sewing-room three years and more. I didn't think you'd remember a servant's face so long, so I didn't tell Mr. Thrall I'd been in your service. My husband was a boss carpenter in a theatre, and that took me there. Me being a good needle-woman, I got work in the wardrobe, and gradually learned the business thorough-like; and when my husband died, as I wanted to hold on to the house, I began taking lodgers as well as working at the theatre, so as to pay off the mortgage some time, I do hope, ma'am." Both women sighed sympathetically as they listened to Mrs. Stivers's calm and self-controlled statement of her financial and professional situation, little dreaming that the oppressive mortgage existed only in the imagination of the undemonstrative widow, who found it too powerful a lever in raising the rent of rooms, in raising her salary, and in raising the hats of compassionate observers--to be willingly abandoned. But though the house mortgage had been cancelled long ago, she was then by way of secretly placing a mortgage upon her own character for upright honesty, for sincerity, for honor. True, there was no overt agreement to dupe a young girl and to circumvent her friends; yet if she made no slip, trip, or blunder in this matter intrusted to her, she surely knew that at its end Stewart Thrall, who guided, governed, and controlled her, would hold first mortgage on her character, since by tacit, unspoken agreement she would become a living surveillance, a personified treachery, while still deceptively wearing the livery of prim respectability and honest labor. Now, Mrs. Van Camp asked the woman to be seated; expressed regret for her bereavement, and, because of the excellent impression Jane Martin had made upon her in the past, looked with unusually lenient eyes upon Jane Stivers of the present, and accepted readily her statements, and trustingly saw in her rectitude, her intelligence, and her respectful and deferential manner the most desirable sort of combination--landlady, maid, and sheep-dog.