"Where is the old woman? I should like to see her," he said dismally, hoping for some light. "She's out, sir, looking for the girl, swearing to kill the man as persuaded her off." "And the family?" "All out, sir. Mrs. Brinkley went to market, and her sister Lizzie to the store, where she and Liane worked." Devereaux pressed a dollar into the good-natured servant's hand, and stumbled back to the carriage, almost blind with pain from this sudden stroke of fate. The servant looked after him with mingled wonder, admiration, and gratitude, and describing him afterward to the family, exclaimed: "The prettiest man I ever saw in my life--coal-black eyes and hair, straight nose, dimple in his chin, slim, white hands, diamond ring, good clothes, fit to kill! He must 'ave been another of Liane's beaus, for, when I told him she had eloped, he turned white as a corpse, and kind of staggered, like I had hit him in the face. But he didn't forget his company manners, for he bowed like a prince and put a whole silver dollar in my hand as he went back to his carriage." "That sounds like Jesse Devereaux, Miss Clarke's lover!" cried Sophie Nutter, and Mrs. Brinkley said quickly: "Well, Liane knew that man, and was in love with him, but he snubbed her with the proudest bow I ever saw, one day when we passed by his grand home on Commonwealth Avenue." "So he lives on Commonwealth Avenue!" remarked Carlos Cisneros, with a flash of his somber, black eyes. He was thinking of the house he had followed Roma's carriage to yesterday--the palatial mansion on Commonwealth Avenue. "So she is there at my rival's house, and she dares to think I will let her marry him! And I have two scores to settle with the handsome Devereaux!" he thought. Devereaux could scarcely believe the terrible news. He hoped there might be some mistake, and he determined to go to the store and see if she might not be there. But there were no pansy-blue eyes smiling over the glove counter, but a pair of sparkling black ones, whose owner smiled. "Miss Lester? No; she is not here to-day. I cannot tell you anything about her; but there's her friend, Miss White, you can ask her--Lizzie!" Lizzie White hurried forward, but she could tell him no more than he had already heard. She wondered whom the handsome stranger could be, but she was too timid to ask his name, only she thought within herself that he must surely be in love with Liane, he was so pale and disturbed looking. It seemed to her that he was most loath to accept the theory that the girl had gone away with a lover. "Is there no possibility she has run away alone to escape her grandmother's cruelty?" he insisted. Lizzie said she could not tell, she had never heard Liane mention any man's name, but she had been more confidential with her mother. "Could you--would you--tell me her lover's name?" he pleaded; but Lizzie answered that it would not be right to betray her friend's confidence.