Dankmere sidled up to Quarren rather timidly toward the close of the afternoon. "I don't see what bally good _I_ am in this business," he said. "I don't mean to shirk, Quarren, but there doesn't seem to be anything for me to do. I think that all these beggars spot me for an ignoramus the moment they lay eyes on me, and the whole thing falls on you." Quarren said laughingly: "Well, didn't you furnish the stock?" "We ought to go halves," muttered Dankmere, shyly skirting Jessie Vining's domain where she was writing letters with the Social Register at her elbow. * * * * * The last days of June and the first of July were repetitions in a measure of the opening day at the Dankmere Galleries; people came and were received and entertained by Quarren; Dankmere sat about in various chairs or retired furtively to the backyard to smoke at intervals; Jessie Vining with more colour in her pale, oval face, ruled her corner of the room in a sort of sweet and silent dignity. Dankmere, who, innately, possessed the effrontery of a born comedian, for some reason utterly unknown to himself, was inclined to be afraid of her--afraid of the clear brown eyes indifferently lifted to his when he entered--afraid of the quiet "Good-morning, Lord Dankmere," with which she responded to his morning greeting--afraid of her cool skilful little hands busy with pencil, pen, or lettered key--afraid of everything about her from her rippling brown hair and snowy collar to the tips of her little tan shoes--even afraid of the back of her head when it presented only a slender neck and two little rosy, close-set ears. But he didn't mention his state of abasement to Quarren. A curious thing occurred, too: Jessie had evidently been gay on Sunday; and, Monday noon, while out for lunch, she had left on her desk two Coney Island postal cards decorated with her own photograph. When she returned, one card had vanished; and she searched quietly but thoroughly before she left for home that evening, but she did not find the card. But she said nothing about it. The dreadful part of the affair was that it was theft--the Earl of Dankmere's first crime. Why he had taken it he did not know. The awful impulse of kleptomania alone seemed to explain but scarcely palliate his first offence against society. It was only after he realised that the picture and Jessie Vining vaguely resembled his dead Countess that his lordship began to understand why he had committed a felony before he actually knew what he was doing. [Illustration: Jessie Vining.] And one day when Quarren was still out for lunch and Jessie had returned to her correspondence, the terrified Earl suddenly appeared before her holding out the photograph: and she took it, astonished, her lifted eyes mutely inquiring concerning the inwardness of this extraordinary episode.