She fixed her clear eyes upon him thoughtfully. "It has occurred to me, too," she said; "but--there is really no need to say anything to Mrs. Belknap. I shall try to do my work as well as I can while I am in her house; after that,"--she paused, then went on deliberately--"I shall go away, and that will be the end of it." He dipped his oars strongly. "It shall not be the end of it," he told himself determinedly. Aloud he said, with a fine show of indifference: "You will, of course, do as you like; but I am sure Margaret would be glad if you would take her into your confidence." Jane smiled with a fine feminine understanding which was lost on the man. "It will be much better not, I am sure," she said sweetly. CHAPTER XVII As John Everett and Jane Blythe walked slowly along the shaded winding path from the rustic bridge where they landed from the flat-iron shaped scow, the girl was thoughtfully silent, and the man glancing at her averted face felt vaguely uncomfortable. But he could hardly have been expected to know that Jane's thoughts were perversely busying themselves with the Hon. Wipplinger Towle. She was wondering uneasily as to what that eminently correct Englishman would think at sight of her walking, quite alone and unchaperoned, with a man, as appeared to be the strange American custom. Then for perhaps the fiftieth time she speculated upon the singular abruptness with which Mr. Towle had abandoned his wooing after her final dismissal of him on Mrs. Belknap's back stoop. "He might at least have sent me word that he was going back to England," she told herself with some indignation, "if he really cared for me as much as he says." The thought of that dear, distant island of her birth colored her answer to John Everett's cursory remark concerning the buffaloes, which lolled in all their huge unwieldy bulk inside a trampled enclosure. "Awkward chaps; aren't they?" he observed; "but the Government is doing its best to preserve them at this late day. They used to be slaughtered by tens of thousands on the plains, you know, until they bade fair to become extinct." Jane shrugged her slender shoulders indifferently. "They are like everything else I have seen in America," she said, "much too big and ugly to be interesting." The tall American cast a laughing glance at the little figure at his side. "We've more room to grow big in than you have in your 'right little, tight little isle,'" he said pleasantly. "Now if you're half as hungry as I am, you're ready to become a generous patron of natural history to the extent of eating some lunch at this restaurant. The net proceeds of all these places of entertainment are said to be turned in to purchase more beasts, birds, and reptiles for the public delectation."