But I was not on a visit to a temple of art, and resolutely shutting my eyes to the offending splendor about me--worsted splendor, you understand,--I waited with subdued expectation for the lady of the house. She came in presently, bedecked in a flowered gown that was an epitome of the blaze of colors everywhere surrounding us; but her face was a good one, and I saw that I had neither guile nor over-much shrewdness to contend with. She had seen the coach at the door, and she was all smiles and flutter. "You have come for the poor girl who stopped here a few days ago," she began, glancing from my face to Lena's with an equally inquiring air, which in itself would have shown her utter ignorance of social distinctions if I had not bidden Lena to keep at my side and hold her head up as if she had business there as well as myself. "Yes," returned I, "we have. Lena here, has lost a relative (which was true), and knowing no other way of finding her, I suggested the insertion of an advertisement in the paper. You read the description given, of course. Has the person answering it been in this house?" "Yes; she came on the morning of the eighteenth. I remember it because that was the very day my cook left, and I have not got another one yet." She sighed and went on. "I took a great interest in that unhappy young woman--Was she your sister?" This, somewhat doubtfully, to Lena, who perhaps had too few colors on to suit her. "No," answered Lena, "she wasn't my sister, but----" I immediately took the words out of her mouth. "At what time did she come here, and how long did she stay? We want to find her very much. Did she give you any name, or tell where she was going?" "She said her name was Oliver." (I thought of the O. R. on the clothes at the laundry.) "But I knew this wasn't so; and if she had not looked so very modest, I might have hesitated to take her in. But, lor! I can't resist a girl in trouble, and she was in trouble, if ever a girl was. And then she had money--Do you know what her trouble was?" This again to Lena, and with an air at once suspicious and curious. But Lena has a good face, too, and her frank eyes at once disarmed the weak and good-natured woman before us. "I thought"--she went on before Lena could answer--"that whatever it was, _you_ had nothing to do with it, nor this lady either." "No," answered Lena, seeing that I wished her to do the talking. "And we don't know" (which was true enough so far as Lena went) "just what her trouble was. Didn't she tell you?"