A word in passing about Jane Sage. She was a slender, graceful girl slightly above medium height, just turning into young womanhood—that alluring, mysterious stage that baffles the imagination and confounds the emotions. Her gray eyes, set widely apart under a broad brow, were clear and soft and wistful, and yet in their untrammeled depths stirred the glow of an intelligence far beyond her slender years. She was an extremely pretty girl. Her mouth was rather large and, like her mother’s, humorous. Her hair, brown, wavy and abundant, grew low upon her forehead. Her teeth were small, even and as white as snow; she showed them when she smiled. There were faint dimples in her cheeks. She kept house for her father, and, at seventeen, made no secret of her determination never to get married! That was settled. Never! She was going to take care of her daddy as long as he lived, and, as she was serenely confident that he would live to be a very old man—indeed, she could not conjure up the thought of him dying at all as other mortals are bound to do sooner or later—there wasn’t any way in the world for her to avoid being an old maid. If she possessed any of her mother’s powers of mimicry, they were never revealed by word or deed. She was singularly lacking in histrionic ability and for that her father was thankful though secretly surprised. Friends of the family, remembering Josephine’s propensities watched closely for signs of an undesirable heritage, and were somewhat disappointed when they failed to develop. If she had not borne such a striking resemblance to her mother, everybody in town would have said that she “took after her father”—and that would have explained everything. That far-distant, almost mythical mother, was no more than a dream to Jane. It was hard for her to believe that the famous actress, Josephine Judge, was her mother; she was secretly proud of the distinguished isolation in which it placed her among her less favored companions. She adored Oliver October. There had been a time when she was his sweetheart, but that was ages ago—when both of them were young! Now he was supposed to be engaged to a girl in the graduating class—and Jane was going to be an old maid—so the childish romance was over. She wished she knew the girl, however, so that she could be sure that Oliver was getting some one who was good enough for him.