“We are not a commission agency, madam,” he said, in a tone so grave that the young lady started, and lifted appealing eyes to him. “O!” she whispered, in a drowned voice, “I did not mean to offend you. But I did not know--I am so young and inexperienced.” He smiled reassuringly. “You could not advance a better claim on the Agency,” he said. “Well, I will make, in justice both to yourself and us, such inquiries as are necessary to the case, and report the result to you together with our decision.” “When?” she entreated, hardly able to articulate. “If you will call the first thing to-morrow morning,” he said--“the office opens at ten o’clock--I shall hope to be in a position to afford you the assistance you desire. The company must be consulted, your claim admitted, permission given. You understand?” She looked at him intently a little, with large haunting eyes; then, whispering that she would trust in him implicitly, that she placed her destiny in his hands, withdrew without another word. Having to pass near Miss Halifax on her way out, she gathered her skirts, with a scarce perceptible movement, from contact with that young lady. “Well?” said Gilead, the moment that she was gone, appealing to his amanuensis. Miss Halifax went on writing, but with a slight flush on her cheek. “Does anything strike you?” he said, persisting. “Only, perhaps,” she answered softly, “that for an _ingénue_, she showed considerable resourcefulness and self-possession.” “H’m!” said Gilead. He reseated himself and, leaning back, tapped his fingers together, between doubt and a small sense of irritation: “We must remember her Continental training, perhaps. As to her father, and her father’s friends, I must confess to some sort of suspicion; but the quality of the graft, Miss Halifax, is not to be judged by the briar. I see no reason to question the main truth of her story; but anyhow it is easily put to the proof. The steamer was certainly sunk as she described. If she was a passenger by it, and the company, being questioned, admits her claim, that surely is all that is necessary to our taking action in the matter. Do you not agree with me?” For the first time the young lady glanced across at him in an agitated way. “I must,” she said low, “on the face of things. It is only the--the guilefulness of my own sex, its plausibility, and its imaginative readiness in concocting fables to--to delude the noble and the generous, that make me sceptical. I can’t help comparing this story with some others we have heard; but I daresay my experiences have robbed me of some delusions about women--indeed I am sure they have, and as much to my shame as to my good.” He looked at her with a sudden light of remorse in his eyes. “I never thought of that in my self-centred blindness,” he said--“that you might suffer from contact with vice.”