Madame De Marke was evidently startled by the threat which Jane Kelly insinuated, rather than spoke; her eyes fell and were lifted again with a sidelong glance. Jane read the glance, and her own eyes filled with the low cunning always uppermost in her nature. “I have two ways of nursing. That ‘masterly inactivity,’ which worked so well for the baby—regular attention to the doctor’s directions when he happens to be an experimentalizing student, or inattention to his orders when he is honest and knows what he is about. Any one of ’em is pretty sure to create a demand for two breadths of cotton muslin and a pine coffin.” “And which of these will you take?” asked madame, anxiously. “None of them, madame. You don’t choose to settle up, and I don’t choose to work for nothing. Can’t afford it; nurses’ pay is next to being a beggar; it’s only two months since they gave me so much as would keep me.” “Why, I thought you had been in Bellevue for years?” “Oh, yes! off and on I have. But then I was only a nurse with five dollars a month. Not much chance to make money, except once in a while, when somebody outside wants a thing hushed up, like this, for instance, or a patient happens to hide a few dollars under her pillow, which gives a few lean pickings and stealings to the nurses.” Madame De Marke’s eyes brightened, and a crafty smile stole over her lips. “Perhaps she’ll have some money hid away. I shouldn’t wonder; enough to pay for your trouble all round; she always was hoarding up. Oh, I have no doubt you may trust to finding heaps of money between her beds, but she’ll take care of it while there is a breath of life in her, never fear that.” The nurse laughed a low, sly laugh, that rather discomposed her hostess. “I’ve searched,” she said; “the poor thing lay insensible two whole hours.” “Then you found nothing?” inquired the Frenchwoman, with a look of keen anxiety. “Nothing but a little silk bag, with some papers in it.” “Papers! What were they? I have missed papers. What were they? Or perhaps you can’t read. Let me look at the papers.” “Oh! yes,” answered the nurse, demurely, “I can read. There was a paper with some poetry on it.” “Poetry!” cried Madame De Marke, in a tone of ineffable contempt, but which gave forth a burst of relief also. “Poetry! is that all?” “No,” replied Jane Kelly, with quiet deliberation. “There was some marriage lines between George De Marke and Catharine Lacy.” Though her face was repulsive and dull from want of washing, Madame De Marke turned pale, and her eyes began to gleam with fierce desire when Jane told what the papers were of which she had become possessed. She stretched forth her hand, and commenced eagerly working the fingers, as a hungry parrot gropes for his food. “Give me the lines. They belong to me. _My_ name was Catharine, and De Marke’s name was George. Give me the lines. She stole them.”