"You won't always feel so bad as this, honey. Things cheer up sooner 'n we expect, and black clouds have silver linin's. Besides, there's friends of yours that wouldn't let you want for nothin', if they knew you was back." She saw the piece of roll stop midway between Viola's mouth and the plate, and her eyes fix themselves on the lid of the tea-pot in an arrested stare. "Who do you mean?" said the girl, the even modulations of her voice not hiding its undertone of apprehension. "Who do you suppose?" retorted Mrs. Cassidy, teasingly. "I can't imagine," replied Viola. "I haven't the slightest idea to whom you're referring." "Oh, yes, you have, now," said Mrs. Cassidy, wagging her head knowingly, and flushing over her broad, buxom face with the pleasure of her secret. "Try and guess." "Who do you mean, Mrs. Cassidy?" said Viola. Her pretension of indifference had suddenly disappeared. She tried to make her voice commanding, but it was full of a frightened distress. "Mr. John Gault," announced the other, her narrow eyes, alight with curiosity, fastened on her lodger's face. The change in its expression, quick, inexplicable in its sudden tightening of the muscles and veiling of the eyes, told the watcher, not what the romance was that she so keenly scented, but confirmed her suspicions that there was a romance of some sort or other. Viola turned back to the tea-things. As she moved them about, the eager eyes of the watcher saw that her hands were trembling. "He's the finest gentleman I ever set eyes on since I came to California," continued the widow, immensely interested and hardly able to wait for further developments. "I said to Micky, after he'd been here, 'There, Mick Cassidy, is the way they grow real gentlemen. No imitation about him!'" "Was he _here_?" came the question, in a hardly comprehending voice. "He was that--and to find out about you. He was that crazy to know where you'd gone that he was at Coggles's, and had the Robsons turned 'most inside out with his questions. When he couldn't get nothing out of them, he got detectives to track out Mick,--'cause, you remember, he'd left that package,--and he was here to find out what I knew. Oh, he's got it bad." Viola, conscious of the scrutiny fastened upon her, bent her face over the tray. She began to make another cup of tea. "I couldn't give him no information," continued Mrs. Cassidy--"more's the pity, for I ain't never seen a gentleman that took my fancy more; and just as pleasant and agreeable as if he was no better off than me or Mick. Policeman O'Hara, when I asked him, says to me: 'Rich? Why, Mrs. Cassidy, he's more money in a minute than you'll ever see in your life. He's a capitalist, and not mean, like the rest of 'em, neither.'"